A regression discontinuity approach to measuring the effectiveness of oil and natural gas regulation to address the common-pool externality

Oil and natural gas reservoirs typically span multiple productive leases so that no owner has rights to the entire stock of resource, resulting in production externalities. Previous literature has examined the effectiveness of government regulation in Texas and Oklahoma in abating these externalities, finding Oklahoma to be more successful in unifying common pools and securing property rights. Using regression discontinuity design, we quantify the impact of regulatory difference between the two states. We find that Oklahoma produces an average of 3361 more barrels of oil over the life of a well, relative to Texas. Given the maturity of the fields in question, the result underscores the continuing importance of addressing common pool externalities even after the primary phase of recovery has largely been completed.     

Information sharing between vertical hierarchies

When do principals independently choose to share the information obtained from their privately informed agents? Information sharing affects contracting within competing organizations and induces agentsʼ strategies to be correlated through the distortions imposed by principals to obtain information. We show that the incentives to share information depend on the nature of upstream externalities between principals and the correlation of agentsʼ information. With small externalities, principals share information when externalities and correlation have opposite signs, and do not share information when externalities and correlation have the same sign. In this second case, principals face a prisonersʼ dilemma since they obtain higher profits by sharing information.     

不同类型创新生态系统如何推动核心技术开发与企业销售增长——以中国电子信息技术产业为例

高科技产业技术创新复杂度急剧提升,营造创新生态系统已成为企业保持长期竞争优势的一种重要战略选择。基于知识管理、技术依存结构与网络外部性等视角,利用中国电子信息技术产业上市公司2007-2017年面板数据,探讨相关技术多元化与非相关技术多元化创新生态系统推动核心技术开发、企业销售增长的深层次机理。结果发现：营造相关技术多元化创新生态系统有助于企业打造核心竞争优势,促进核心技术开发,并借此实现企业销售增长;营造非相关技术多元化创新生态系统不仅能够直接促进核心技术开发与企业销售增长,更有助于丰富互补配套产品技术体系,激发间接网络效应,与相关技术多元化创新生态系统形成耦合效应,从而共同促进企业销售增长。     

Empirical Implications of Equilibrium Bidding in First-Price, Symmetric, Common Value Auctions

This paper studies federal auctions for wildcat leases on the Outer Continental Shelf from 1954 to 1970. These are leases where bidders privately acquire (at some cost) noisy, but equally informative, signals about the amount of oil and gas that may be present. We develop tests of rational and equilibrium bidding in a common values model that are implemented using data on bids and ex post values. We also use data on tract location and ex post values to test the comparative static prediction that bidders may bid less aggressively in common value auctions when they expect more competition. We find that bidders are aware of the "winner's curse" and their bidding is largely consistent with equilibrium.     

Endogenous order and information aggregation

Privately informed experts with heterogeneous expertise decide when to give advice and what advice to give. Each expert’s utility depends upon that expert’s own message as well as those of the other experts. Under different forms of payoff externalities, we find varying results for the optimal order in which messages are sent and the existence of herd behavior. Under negative payoff externalities, all experts send a message together without any delay and a herd never arises. This leads to truthful revealing of all private information. Without forcing any order of speech, we obtain a result similar to the ‘anti-seniority rule’. This, however, goes in the opposite direction when positive payoff externalities are induced. An incentive structure with positive payoff externalities gives rise to a herd led by the most precise expert with a delay in the disclosure of information. Next, we test for the nature of payoff externalities in the remuneration of forecasters listed with I/B/E/S. We find that the underlying payoff externalities are negative, i.e. the benefit from making dissimilar forecasts is higher than that from making similar ones.     

The simple analytics of tobacco taxation with illegal supply

This paper examines the impact of tobacco excise taxes where legal and illegal supplies coexist. The government's objective is to minimize cigarettes smoked in the economy (or to maximize revenue or to minimize illegal activity). It reacts to a competitive illegal supply in an adjoining jurisdiction. A model of consumer choice is used to demonstrate how demand response to tax changes can yield counterintuitive results. While the model mimics the Canadian market, similar situations characterize the US and European markets. A novel element of the paper is the treatment of externalities on the supply side rather than the demand side.     

资源再生产业特征解析:基于“结构-行为-绩效”范式的研究

借鉴经典"结构—行为—绩效"范式,以资源型产业为参照对象,从资源再生产业的市场结构、市场行为和市场绩效三个角度,对资源再生产业特征进行深入解析,研究认为:资源再生产业是一个"落脚自由"的产业,技术弹性大,产业链较长,产业关联度大,具有规模经济性,兼具劳动密集型和技术密集型双重特征。这样的市场结构,决定了其市场波动性大,生产规模较小,经营灵活;反映到市场绩效上,其环境外部性表现出双面性,既具有明显的环境正外部性,又表现了很强的负外部效应。     

Regulation of common property resources under private information about resource externalities

Optimal marginal investment incentives and optimal entry regulations are developed for a case where heterogeneous firms exploit a common property natural resource. The government’s objectives are to correct for resource externalities and to tax away the resource rent. Both individual output and efficiency levels are subject to private information, i.e. it is a model with multi-agency, externalities, and countervailing incentives. There are asymmetric information about the net revenue of the firm and the size of the resource externalities that the firm inflicts on the other firms in the industry. The latter implies that external effects are present both in the firms’ net incomes and in the information rents.     

网络外部性与补偿激励下的非线性定价

本文构建了一个一般性模型用以说明在非对称信息与网络外部性并存时,垄断厂商如何设计非线性价格合约甄别不同类型的消费者。模型表明两者的并存修正了经典逆向选择模型中"顶部无扭曲"和"单向扭曲"的基本结论。具体的消费量扭曲方式取决于网络是否存在拥挤:对于非拥挤性网络,消费量表现为单向扭曲;对于拥挤性网络,表现为双向扭曲;而对于中性网络则仍为顶部无扭曲。此外,本文还分析了引起双向扭曲的另一种原因,即由类型依赖的保留效用引起的补偿激励问题。     

Does FDI Bring Environmental Knowledge Spillovers to Developing Countries? The Role of the Local Industrial Structure

This paper examines the environmental knowledge externalities of FDI within and across cities in an emerging economy context. It argues that the extent of these environmental externalities is contingent upon local industrial agglomeration. Using a panel dataset of 280 Chinese prefectural cities from 2003 to 2012, we employ a spatial economic approach. Although limited to evidence from soot and \(\hbox {SO}_{2}\) pollutants, our results suggest that FDI brings overall positive environmental knowledge externalities to a region, and also spillovers to nearby regions. Specialised cities may lock into a particular technological path, attenuating the absorption and diffusion of a variety of FDI environmental knowledge. Conversely, diversified cities promote cross-fertilisation of environmental knowledge and mitigate local pollution intensity at the aggregated city level. This study adds to the literature by highlighting the importance of considering both the spatiality of FDI and industrial structure in understanding FDI environmental knowledge spillovers.     

The scope of auctions in the presence of downstream interactions and information externalities

We scrutinize the scope of auctions for firm acquisitions in the presence of downstream interactions and information externalities. We show that no mechanism exists that allows an investor to acquire a low-cost firm under incomplete information: a separating auction implies adverse selection and relies substantially on commitment to allocation and transfer rules. A pooling auction serves as a commitment device against ex-post opportunistic behavior and alleviates adverse selection. It can earn the investor a higher expected payoff than a separating auction, even when consistency is required as to qualify for a sequential equilibrium.     

Information design,externalities, and government interventions

We consider a model of Bayesian persuasion with spillovers. A sender provides information to persuade a receiver to take an action with external effects. We consider how government interventions, including corrective subsidy and tax, affect social welfare. In addition to internalizing externalities, government interventions affect social welfare through an informational channel. Subsidies to the sender's preferred action incentivize the sender to reveal less information, but taxes on the sender's preferred action incentivize the sender to reveal more information. Because of such an informational effect, the optimal subsidy and tax may be different from the size of the externalities. In some cases, social welfare is maximized with no government intervention.     

Distributive Politics and the Costs of Centralization

This paper studies the choice between centralization and decentralization of fiscal policy in a political economy setting. With centralization, regional delegates vote over agendas comprising sets of region–specific projects. The outcome is inefficient because the choice of projects is insufficiently sensitive to within–region benefits. The number of projects funded may be non–monotonic in the strength of project externalities. The efficiency gains from decentralization, and the performance of "constitutional rules" (such as majority voting) which may be used to choose between decentralization and centralization, are then discussed in this framework. Weaker externalities and more heterogeneity between regions need not increase the efficiency gain from decentralization.     

Heterogeneity vs. externalities in technological competition: A tale of possible technological landscapes

The article presents a stochastic interaction model based on Gibbs random fields to analyze technological competition in a population of heterogeneous adopters with local or global externalities. The relationships between both heterogeneity and externalities and imperfect and asymmetric information are first emphasized. When local externalities and heterogeneity coexist, the technological landscapes of the industry are then shown to depend on the relative influence of these two parameters, with a phase transition: technologies coexist either in approximately equal market shares when heterogeneity is high enough or with one of the technologies only surviving in technological niches when local externalities dominate. Niches do also spontaneously appear: technological options survive in economic space due to the existence of some amount of heterogeneity among agents. On the contrary, when global externalities are added, pure standardization almost always occurs. We finally argue that different public policies should be designed so as to fit with different technological landscapes.     

Dynamic effects of externalities,optimal saving and economic growth

Conclusion Recognizing the fact that provision of mixed public goods can result in both consumption externalities of the Samuelsonian variety as well as production externalities we set out to extend the earlier results of Rao and Kalpagam (1977) on the effect of public goods on economic growth. In so doing, we considered three standard specifications of production externalities and enlarged the concept of consumption displacement. Our basic conclusion is that the results of our earlier paper remain valid under the more general conditions set out in this paper.     

Environmental Policies, Comparative Advantage and the Gains/Losses from International Trade

A multihousehold economy with multilateral nondepletable externalities, environmental (output) taxation and governmental production of pure, nonexclusive and nonrivalrous public goods is assumed. Modelling many different households the "almost perfect" isomorphism between the normative analysis of public goods and environmental policies is highlighted. Globally valid necessary and sufficient conditions for gains from international trade are derived and interpreted. A simple yet general environmental policy rule ensuring trade gains is put forward. The law of comparative advantage is generalized to economies with multilateral nondepletable externalities and over or underproduced pure public goods.     

是什么阻碍了可持续发展?

生态环境的可持续性已成为中国经济发展面临的最严峻挑战,持续发展问题的探讨却"外热内冷",表面上被频繁提及,实际上却被严重忽视,除去外部性和"公地悲剧",阻碍可持续发展的"非经济"因素更加复杂。首先,由于环境恶化是一个渐变过程,普遍的短视行为使得文明崩溃的历史总是被遗忘;其次,在现实观念中,对技术过分依赖和敌视两种态度限制了其合理利用;复次,知识无序积累造成学术型无知和错误的知识传播,而片面追求经济增长指标的后果要在长期中才会显现出来;最后,对不受约束的奢侈生活方式的追求导致无止境地向地球索取。因此,实现可持续发展需要彻底的观念变革,建立基于系统性的科学教育体系,以及开放的信息管理。     

Computers And Growth

The purpose of this paper is to describe the impact of investment in computers on the growth of the U.S. economy. The economic literature on computers is relatively rich in information on the decline in computer prices and the growth of computer investment. Constant quality price indices for computers have been included in the U.S. National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA) since 1986. These indices employ state of the art methodology to capture the rapid evolution of computer technology.

While the annual inflation rate for overall investment has been 3.66 percent for the period 1958 to 1992, computer prices have declined by 19.13 percent per year! Similarly, overall investment grew at 3.82 percent, while investment in computers increased at an astounding 44.34 percent! These familiar facts describe growth in the output of computers. The objective of this paper is to complete the picture by analyzing the growth of computer services as inputs.

In a pioneering paper Bresnahan (1986) has focused on pecuniary externalities arising from the rapid decline in computer prices. Griliches (1992, 1994) has emphasized the distinction between pecuniary and nonpecuniary externalities in the impact of computer investment on growth. This paper is limited to pecuniary externalities or the impact of reductions in computer prices on the substitution of computer services for other inputs. As Griliches (1992) points out, this is an essential first step in identifying nonpecuniary externalities or ‘spill-overs’ through the impact of a decline in computer prices on productivity growth. ^{* *}Brynjolfsson (1993) has proveded a detailed survey of studies of nonpecuniary externalities or ‘spill overs’. Recent studies include those of Brynjolfsson and Hitt (1994a, 1994b) and Lichtenberg (1993).

In two important papers Stephen D. Oliner (1993, 1994) has introduced a model of computer technology that greatly facilitates the measurement of computer services as inputs. In this paper we estimate computer stocks and flows of computer services for all forms of computer investment included in NIPA. We construct estimates of computer services parallel to NIPA data on computer investment by combining these data with information on computer inventories. For example, the International Data Corporation (IDC) Census of Computer Processors includes an annual inventory of processors in the U.S.

In Section 1 we present data on investment in computers and constant quality price indices from NIPA. These data incorporate important innovations in modeling computer technology stemming from a joint study by IBM and the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) completed in 1985. This study utilized a ‘hedonic’ methodology for constructing an econometric model of computer prices that accurately reflects rapid changes in computer technology. This methodology generates an index of computer prices that holds the quality of computers constant.

In Section 2 we present the model of computer services originated by Oliner (1993,1994). This differs in important respects from the model of capital services used in the previous studies of U.S. economic growth surveyed by Jorgenson (1989,1990). The model employed in previous studies is based on the decline in productive capacity with the chronological age of a capital good. Oliner assumes that computers maintain their productive capacity until they are retired. Decline in productive capacity occurs only through removal of used computers from the inventory through retirement.

In Section 3 we construct estimates of stocks of computers that incorporate IDC data on computer inventories and derive the implied flow of computer services. While output of computer investments has grown very rapidly, the input of computer services has grown even faster. The price of these services has declined at 23.22 percent per year over the period 1958 to 1992, while the input of these services has grown at 52.82 percent! This is prima facie evidence of an important role for computer price declines as a source of pecuniary externalities.

In Section 4 we combine computer services with the services of other types of capital to produce a measure of capital input into the U.S. economy. We link this with labor input to obtain the contributions of both inputs to U.S. economic growth, arriving at the growth of productivity as a residual. We find that the contribution of computer services to input into the U.S. economy is far more important than the contribution of computer investments to output. This is a significant step toward resolution of the Solow paradox: ‘We see computers everywhere except in the productivity statistics. ^{* *}Robert M. Solow, quoted by Brynjolfsson (1993). Declines in computer prices generate very sizable pecuniary externalities through the substitution of computer services for other inputs. By contrast Solow focuses on nonpecuniary externalities that would appear as productivity growth.

In Section 5 we conclude that information on inventories of computers is critical in quantifying the role of computer services as inputs. The constant quality price indices for computers incorporated into NIPA are also essential. A price index for computers that reflects only general trends in inflation would result in a highly distorted perspective on the growth of GDP and capital services, especially during the past decade. To capture the contribution of all forms of investment to U.S. economic growth, similar price indices should be included in NIPA for capital goods with rapidly evolving technologies, as proposed by Gordon (1990).

The long term goal should be a unified system of income. product, and wealth accounts, like that proposed by Laurits Christensen and Jorgenson (1973) and Jorgenson (1980). This incorporates capital stocks, capital services, and their prices. Achieving this goal will necessitate much greater elaboration of the accounting system described in Section 3. These accounts would incorporate data on prices and quantities of investment, stocks of assets, and capital services for all forms of capital employed in the U.S. economy.     

Price Competition and Consumer Externalities in a Vertically Differentiated Duopoly with Information Disparities

In this paper, we extend the model of vertical product differentiation to consider information disparities about quality differences and their effects on price competition. If uninformed consumers overestimate vertical differentiation, asymmetric information is a source of market power and informed consumers exert positive externalities on high quality product purchasers and negative externalities on low quality product purchasers. Such a result is consistent with the fact that information undermines brand. If uninformed consumers are skeptical, adverse selection issues arise and market demands may be perfectly inelastic to prices. With elastic demands equilibrium prices may be either distorted downwards or reflect real quality if the share of informed consumers is suffciently high. Therefore, with skeptical consumers firms may want either to signal quality or subsidize information provision.     

Sustainability and externalities: Is the internalization of externalities a sufficient condition for sustainability?

In an important contribution in Ecological Economics, van de Bergh (2010) correctly concludes that sustainability does not imply zero externalities. However, he continues with the Delphic statement "(Delphic statements were uttered by the renowned oracle of ancient Greece at Delphi. They were phrased in such a way as to be self-fulfilling because alternative interpretations covered every possibility.)" "Without externalities the problem of sustainability vanishes". If this statement refers to an impossible economic process that produces no externalities then he is right. However, it might be interpreted as stating that whenever environmental policy internalizes environmental externalities then sustainability will be ensured. In this note, I assert that in the real world where externalities prevail, their internalization or neutralization in the traditional way cannot lead to sustainability. Only if internalization takes a very specific form that results in the inviolable preservation of environmental rights of future generations in pure biological terms can sustainability be ensured. After revised the original commentary I resubmit it. The issues raised by the editor have been carefully considered.