Budget preferences and direct utility

This paper extends a result of Sakai, who presented conditions for indirect preferences from which a utility function can be deduced if demand is single valued. It will be shown that—adding a “partial Lipschitz condition”—Sakai's theorem can be extended to multi-valued demand. Our result follows from the extension of a theorem of Hurwicz and Richter, who have shown that, under certain hypotheses on demand correspondences, an upper semicontinuous utility function f exists, so that the set of utility maximal elements μ_f(B) is contained in the choice set h(B) for every budget B. By our partial Lipschitz condition h(B) ?- μ_f(B) also follows.     

Implicit contracts with effort incentives

The model combines the principal-agent approach with the analysis of labor contracts under demand uncertainty. Given the necessity to impose effort incentives the optimal contract is shown to maintain an efficient insurance with respect to the demand uncertainty and the employment risk. However, this efficient insurance may now yield either voluntary or involuntary layoff unemployment. Further, the optimal effort levels entail “underemployment” given adominant strategy incentive mechanism as well as under aNash-equilibrium mechanism. In contrast, the optimal employment levels fall short of achieving efficient production only in the latter case.     

Taxes,permits, and the diffusion of a new technology

This study looks at the effects of the choice between taxes and permits on the pattern of adoption of a new (pollution) emissions abatement technology. It uses a dynamic setting, where the regulator observes the arrival and initial use of the technology and determines the optimal ex post amount of emissions before firms start to adopt the technology.In the model here, the adoption benefits and costs depend on the number of firms that are already using the technology. Thus, each firm decides the optimal date to adopt the technology, considering its benefits and costs, as well as the advantage they will gain over their rivals, producing a sequence of adoption that is “diffused” into the industry over time.With this framework, the study shows that when the output demand is elastic, auctioned permits induce an earlier diffusion than taxes.     

Monetary equilibrium and price stickiness reconsidered: A reply to Bagus and Howden

Bagus and Howden (Review of Austrian Economics 24(4): 383?C402, 2011) argue that price stickiness is a poor justification for advocating a flexible money supply through the issuing of fiduciary media under central or free banking. They view the contraction in output following an exogenous increase in money demand as an optimal response, worry about redistribution effects from the issuance of fiduciary media, and claim a changing money supply complicates economic calculation. Accepting their view that the contraction in output is an optimal response to an exogenous change in money demand, we still find a potentially beneficial role for monetary policy (under central banking) or fractional reserve note issue (under free banking). We show that even if all prices were perfectly flexible, changes in the money supply to offset changes in money demand might still be desirable. We point out several errors and mischaracterizations in their article, justify our decision to disregard wealth transfers, and discuss how a flexible money supply might facilitate economic calculation.     

Government incentive strategies and private capital participation in China’s Shale gas development

Shale gas development investments are uncertain and irreversible in the initial stage in China. Flexible incentive strategy is needed for governments to guide private capital participation at different development stages. This study aims to provide analysis governments can use to encourage private investment in shale gas projects according to its plans in an extended real options framework. A social benefits variable is introduced to determine the threshold of social benefits that determine whether the government will choose a deferred or instant incentives strategy. By considering the efficiency factor, we show the optimal arrangements of two kinds of incentives: tax cuts and production subsidies, to implement incentive targets. The results indicate that current market demand and social benefits are the key factors that affect the government’s choice of incentive strategy. We also find that the optimal level of incentives, either tax cuts or production subsidies, are independent of current market demand and future market uncertainty under the delayed incentive strategy, but which affect the optimal level of incentives under the instant motivation strategy, and ignoring the negative influence of unpredictable random events on future market demand might lead to insufficient government incentives in this case.     

Optimal scrutiny in multi-period promotion tournaments

Consider a principal who hires heterogeneous agents to work for him over T periods, without prior knowledge of their skills, and intends to promote one of them at the end. In each period the agents choose effort levels that influence their outputs, and are fully informed of the past history of outputs. The principal's major objective is to maximize the expected total output, but he may also put some weight on detecting the higher-skilled agent for promotion. To this end, he randomly samples n out of the T periods and promotes the agent who produces more on the sample. This determines an extensive form game Γ(T,n), which we analyze for its subgame perfect equilibria in behavioral strategies. We show that the principal will do best to always choose a small sample size n. More precisely, if η(T) is the maximal optimal sample size, then η(T)/T→0 as T→∞.     

The efficiency of bonus-or-terminate incentive schemes under subjective evaluations

We study a repeated principal–agent model with subjective evaluations. We construct simple bonus-or-terminate incentive schemes. In these schemes, the principal evaluates the agent every T periods. The principal pays a bonus and asks the agent to work for T more periods if the evaluation is positive. The relationship is terminated if the evaluation is negative. The inefficiencies in these schemes vanish as the agent can be more frequently evaluated. This result holds generally under objective or subjective evaluations.     

Correlation and relative performance evaluation

This paper reexamines the issue of relative versus joint incentive schemes in a multi-agent moral-hazard framework. The model allows a full analysis of the information and dependence structure. An important result is that the widespread notion that greater correlation in outcomes calls for more competition is not robust. First, when the dependence structure is effort-sensitive, the optimal incentive scheme in general mixes elements of relative evaluation and joint evaluation. Second, under limited liability, higher equilibrium correlation tends to make joint performance evaluation more desirable. Examples are provided regarding incentives in firms, finance and innovation.     

Controlling Illegal Immigration: On the Scope for Cooperation with a Transit Country

We consider the implications of cooperation with respect to immigration control between a final‐destination country (D) and its poorer neighbor (T). Assuming that the latter serves as a transit country for undocumented immigrants, a key question is how much aid should D provide to T for the purpose of strengthening its immigration controls. The problem for T is to determine what proportion of aid to use strictly for immigration control rather than trying to meet other border‐security objectives. We examine the Nash equilibrium values of the policy instruments of both countries and compare them with those which are optimal when international cooperation on immigration control extends to maximization of joint welfare. We also consider a two‐stage game in which D first decides on how much aid to transfer to T, with the latter subsequently choosing how to use it.     

A CLASS OF PERFORMANCE‐BASED SUBSIDY RULES*

We consider a benchmark static incentive scheme, i.e. a per unit subsidy, that induces a monopoly to produce a target output level. We show that the same output level can be achieved by a continuum of dynamic subsidy rules based on a performance indicator. The rules require only local information. The present value of the subsidies paid is smaller than the amount paid under the static subsidy. Each of the dynamic subsidy rules results at each moment in a lower per unit subsidy than the static subsidy. The subsidy rate depends on a state variable that reflects the monopolist's performance history.     

Semicollusion vs. Full Collusion: The Role of Demand Uncertainty and Product Substitutability

We examine the profitability of two different cartel organizational forms: full collusion, under which firms collude on both price and quality, and semicollusion, under which firms collude on price only. We show that, in the presence of demand uncertainty that cannot be contracted upon in the cartel agreement, firms may be better off limiting their collusive agreement to price only. However, a positive relationship between demand uncertainty and the relative profitability of semicollusion exists only for low levels of demand substitutability. The converse is true for high levels of demand substitutability. Therefore, if demand substitutability is sufficiently high, no level of demand uncertainty will make semicollusion the optimal organizational form. In contrast, semicollusion is guaranteed to be optimal for a sufficiently low level of demand substitutability. The market structure described is motivated by and closely parallels that of shipping cartels. Received September 29, 2000; revised version received December 10, 2001 Published online: November 11, 2002     

Assessing structural changes in the Malaysian economy: I–O approach

This study attempts to re-investigate the production structure change for the Malaysian economy through changes in the A and (I − A)^− 1 matrices over the period 1980–2005, when the planners formulated and implemented nine plans so far. Five input–output tables were published by the Department of Statistics in Malaysia for the period under study. A structural change method was carried out to analyze and assess the changes in economic efficiency. This comparative study focuses on changes in the economic structure with different levels of development over time (1980–2005). The change in the economic structure is decomposed into two initial components (technology and total output). In accordance with the results, there appear to be similarities over time in the national structure of production patterns of intermediate use of commodities. Also, the results clearly indicate a rather remarkable degree of commonality in the patterns of growth processes, with more significant differences among sectors than between tables. However, the changes within sectors, and the Malaysian table as a whole, seem to result from changes in the level of the efficiency. Technical relationship seems to have remained relatively unchanged. It is clear that the economy has not moved fast enough forward, and does not seem to be geared by, the type of exports that may sustain a dynamic industrial development, based on external markets. New evidence is revealed in this study: the efficiency degree between demand and supply side for the Malaysian economy still remain weak and changeable over the period of study.     

Asymmetry in the Response of Price-Cost Margins to the Level of Demand Across Booms and Slumps: the Case of U.S. Industries* I thank Editor of this journal and an anonymous referee for their helpful suggestions and

Haltiwanger and Harrington (1991) reveal that, while the gain from deviating

from a collusive agreement in an oligopolistic industry is greatest during booms, it

is most difficult to collude during recessions since forgone profits inflicted on

defection are relatively low in recessions. Their numerical simulations show that

firms price more countercyclically during recessions than during booms to deter

relatively greater incentive to defect in recession. This paper tests for a potential

asymmetry in the response of margins to the level of demand across booms and

slumps, using panel data covering 180 U.S. four-digit level SIC manufacturing

industries over the 1963-1987 period. The principal findings accept this theoretical

prediction. [L1, L6]     

Dynamic control of a monopolist’s product and process innovation with reference quality

ABSTRACT

Our main purpose is to investigate the dynamic control problem of a monopolist’s product and process innovation under reference quality. The main features of this article are: (i) a monopolist dealing with customer behaviour in the spirit of the principle of behaviour economics determines the product price, and carries out the activities of product and process innovation; (ii) the consumers’ demand depends on price, product quality and reference quality, and adopts an additive separable demand function form. Our main results show that under the cases of the monopolist optimum and the social planner optimum, (i) there exists an unique stable, which is a saddle-point steady-state equilibrium; (ii) the change rates of the monopolist’s investments in product and process innovation are increasing with the reference quality, while the monopolist’s steady-state investments in product and process innovation are decreasing with the reference quality; (iii) as the memory parameter increases with other parameters kept constant, it is very likely that the monopolist’s investment in process innovation be greater than the investment in product innovation; and (iv) the social incentive towards both investments in product and process innovation is always larger than the private incentive characterizing the profit-seeking monopolist.     

Monopoly Price Dispersion Under Demand Uncertainty

When a monopolist sets its price before its demand is known, then it may set more than one price and limit the availability of its output at lower prices. This article adds demand uncertainty and price rigidities to the standard model of monopoly pricing. When there are two states of demand and the ex post monopoly price is greater when demand is high then the monopolist's optimal ex ante pricing strategy is to set two prices and limit purchases at the lower price.     

Cardinal Bayesian allocation mechanisms without transfers

In allocating goods with no use of monetary transfers, random allocation mechanisms can be designed in order to elicit information on preference intensities. I study the nontransfer allocation of two ex-ante identical objects under Bayesian incentive compatibility, with symmetric agents and independent private valuations. I find the ex-ante utilitarian-optimal mechanism, in which the probability of receiving a specified object is used as “numeraire” to purchase probability units of the other object. I characterize this mechanism as an appropriate combination of lotteries, auctions and insurance. The latter element ensures that efficient auctions are feasible. If the problem is constrained to guarantee exactly one object per agent, then the optimal mechanism uses no information other than the agents? ordinal preferences.     

Borrowing constraints and the trade balance–output comovement

The countercyclical trade balance ratio is among the key stylized facts about open economies. The magnitude of the correlation between the trade balance and output, however, differs from country to country. In particular, the trade balance ratio is more negatively correlated with output in emerging economies than in developed economies, suggesting that the trade balance is more sensitive to output changes in the former than in the latter. This paper explores whether this difference is caused by international borrowing constraints imposed on emerging economies.By modeling borrowing constraints as conditional on macroeconomic performance, this paper shows that when there is a positive shock takes place in an emerging economy, GDP increases and the borrowing constraint becomes less binding, resulting in a decreased incentive to accumulate foreign assets. When there is a negative shock, by contrast, GDP falls, and the representative household must increase the trade balance to avoid possible binding borrowing constraints.     

基于过度自信的企业发展低碳经济激励机制研究

在考虑企业过度自信的情况下,建立了企业发展低碳经济的激励机制模型并进行了系统研究。结果表明:政府的最优激励补贴与企业的风险规避度、外界不确定因素方差、努力成本系数负相关,与企业节能减排产出系数和过度自信水平正相关;当企业的过度自信水平满足一定约束条件时,政府的激励补贴强度以及期望环境收益都要大于企业完全理性时的情形;当企业的过度自信水平超过一定约束条件时,政府的最优激励补贴以及期望环境收益小于0;企业过度自信的容忍度与企业风险规避系数以及外界不确定因素正相关。     

Sufficient conditions for D-stability

Sufficient conditions for an n by n matrix to be D-stable are surveyed. Use is made of some transformations under which the D-stables are invariant and relations among the conditions are given. The verifiability of the thirteen conditions cited is also discussed. The lack of an effective characterization of D-stability motivates the discussion.     

BOOTSTRAPPING COVARIATE UNIT ROOT TESTS: AN APPLICATION TO INFLATION RATES

This paper proposes a bootstrap procedure for the covariate point optimal tests (CP_T) of Elliott and Jansson. Although the covariate tests enjoy large power gains over the traditional univariate unit root tests, our simulations show that they still suffer from severe size distortions at finite samples. Through simulations, we demonstrate the superiority of the bootstrap procedure in the sense that it can yield desirable size and power properties for the CP_T tests when the Akaike's information criterion is used. Moreover, we show the empirical relevance of the bootstrap tests by applying them to inflation in the G‐10 countries, and then obtain strong evidence against the unit root hypothesis for most countries at the 5% significance level.