Ramsey pricing and competition: The consequences of myopic regulation

This paper addresses the welfare consequences of applying the Ramsey rule when the regulated firm is not a monopolist in all of its markets. The partially regulated optimum and the outcome of myopic regulation, the Short-Sighted Ramsey Equilibrium (SSRE), are examined in a differentiated duopoly model. In the optimum, the markup of competitive substitute goods is relatively high. In the SSRE, the regulator is likely to set the price of competitive substitute goods lower than optimal, and complementary goods higher than optimal. Strategic reactions by a competitor may reverse the result.I thank Kenneth Train, Michael Crew (the editor), seminar participants at the University of California, Berkeley, and an anonymous referee for comments and suggestions. The usual disclaimer applies.     

Economic instruments for emission abatement under appreciable technological indivisibilities

The paper explores the performance of decentralized incentives when abatement involves technological indivisibilities. Technologically, pollution abatement is often carried out as a discrete process, if pollution reduction involves relatively large-scale investments in emission abatement equipment.Consequently, the firm's response to decentralized economic incentives for pollution abatement is affected by the indivisible property of the technology. It can be shown that in such cases efficiency may not be realized. Installing an abatement device may entail too much or too little investment compared with the eficient solution.To partially remedy this problem, an incentive scheme which incorporates a fine (penalty) on pollution-induced damages is proposed in this paper. Essentially, as in the case of the command and control approach, the mechanism imposes a fine when firms do not meet an aggregate (e.g., a bubble) emission level. The fine is set as a proportion of the polluting firm's share of the total excess damage inflicted when the standard has been violated. The paper explores alternative outcomes under this scheme in the framework of a non-cooperative game.The outcomes under command and control (uniform percentage reductions), taxes, pollution permits and the fine scheme are illustrated with data from the haifa area in northern Israel. They are compared with the social planner solution in terms of efficiency (achieving a given standard at minimum cost) and the volume of transfer cost.     

Strategic Reaction of Vertically Integrated Firms to Downstream Entry: Deterrence or Accommodation

The purpose of this paper is to analyze strategic behavior of vertically integrated firms when there is downstream entry, taking into account the balance between competition in the market and competition for the market. This analysis can serve to explain diverse distributional structures, including the coexistence of vertically integrated firms and independent retailers. And it shows that the relative efficiency of downstream entrants and the level of competition among incumbents are two major factors in determining equilibrium configuration.     

Friedrich Hayek's Theory of Spontaneous Order: Two Problems

The paper finds Hayek's basic building block, the natural/artificialcontrast, to be illuminating. But the manner in which Hayek classifiesentities according to the contrast generates two major problemsin his socio-economic theory. First, Hayek's concept designconfuses the technical construction of, e.g., a chair with thedeliberate organization of division of labor within the firm.Second, Hayek's notion spontaneous order fails to note twokinds of natural order — firms and markets.     

Exchange rates and bertrand oligopoly

The impact of exchange-rate changes on industrial prices seems ambiguous. Incomplete and even perverse pass-through has been observed: the import prices in the depreciating country decrease while those in the appreciating country increase. To explain these counterintuitive price reactions we consider a situation of international Bertrand competition: two firms, based in different countries, are selling in both countries simultaneously. The profit-maximizing duopolists set the prices for their products in each of the two markets which are segmented on the demand side. We then study the qualitative effect of an exogenous exchange-rate change on the Bertrand-Nash equilibrium. Under the strong assumption of linear demand and cost functions we have normal exchange-rate pass-through. However, allowing for more general cost structures in this simple static model enables us to show that the import prices in both countries might move in counterintuitive directions.     

Innovation,profitability and growth over the business cycle

Recent debates about Industrial Policy are dominated by a concern to make firms more innovative. In order to make progress in assessing the magnitude of the effects of innovation on corporate performance, one needs to know how such effects occur. We have contrasted two views of the effect of innovation—the product view and the process view—and have provided some evidence to suggest that both effects are evident in the data. Although it is clear that individual innovations themselves have a positive effect on profitability and growth, it is equally clear that the process of innovation seems to transform firms in some way that gives rise to what look like generic differences between innovators and non-innovators. As a consequence, the process by which profitability and growth are generated differs noticeably between the two types of firms. Perhaps the clearest of these differences is that innovating firms seem to be much less sensitive to cyclical shocks than non-innovating firms are.We are obliged to the ESRC for support. Some of the work discussed here draws upon joint work with John Van Reenan, and we are obliged to him for his assistance and helpful comments. Jonathan Haskel also provided very helpful comments on an early draft of the paper. We are also obliged to seminar audiences at the University of Ulster, the University of Manchester, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, NERA, UMIST, University College London, the Centre for Economic Performance at the LSE and the Industrial Organization Conference held at Vienna, June 24–26, 1992, for many stimulating observations. However, the usual disclaimer applies.     

Exchange rates and perfect competition

The purpose of this note is to demonstrate that the commonly held belief that incomplete and perverse pass-through are incompatible with perfect competition is wrong! To this end, we consider two types of firms both operating in two countries. The demand sides of the markets of the two countries are separated and each type of firm produces its good in one of these countries. We study the effect of an exchange-rate change on the competitive equilibrium prices in each country. When producing for the foreign market causes the same costs as producing for the home market then the law of one price holds and an exchange-rate change is completely offset by price changes. Furthermore, when cost functions neither exhibit economies nor diseconomies of scope between producing for the home and producing for the foreign market then prices move in the right directions in response to an exchange-rate change. However, with general cost structures, even in this simple perfectly competitive model, perverse directions of price changes can result from an exchange-rate change.     

A public contracting evolutionary game with corruption

In this paper, firms are randomly matched from a continuous population to play a public contracting game (say, building a bridge). Price is given, so firms compete in quality; the higher the quality offer, the less the profit. According to the official rules of the contest, the firm bidding the highest quality wins; however, we consider the possibility that firms attempt to corrupt the public officer in charge in order to be sure to win even if bidding a lower quality (quality bids are not publicly observable). Whether or not firms attempt to corrupt depends on how rewarding corruption is w. r. t. being honest. Within a dynamic evolutionary framewark, we investigate how social conventions with or without corruption are established under various assumptions concerning the corruptability of the public officer and the possibility of an external monitoring of the officer's decisions by a super partes authority.     

Asymmetric Factor Substitutability and Indeterminacy

We consider a discrete-time two-sector CES economy with sector specific external effects in which factor substitutability differs across sectors. For this general model, we provide sufficient conditions on the elasticities of capital/labor substitution for local indeterminacy of equilibria.Acknowledgement We would like to thank two anonymous referees, the editor Dieter Bös and Tapan Mitra for comments on an earlier version of this paper, previously entitled Capital Depreciation, Factors Substitutability and Indeterminacy, which allowed us to improve considerably the results.     

Sparen und Einkommensverteilung

Summary The wage and salary bill in Austrian manufacturing industry is divided into a fixed and a variable part on the assumption that wages of skilled labour and salaries can be regarded as fixed, wages of unskilled and semi-skilled workers as variable cost. The excess of value added (factor incomes) over the variable wage cost (gross profit) is shown to be more stable in the trade cycle than the excess of value added over the total wage cost (net profit); this accords with the idea of a relatively stable mark-up on variable cost.As a proportion of value added, gross profit and even more net profit in the above sense decline gradually over the period 1956 to 1972. This would indicate a declining degree of monopoly or increasing degree of competition which presumably applies mainly to the export markets. The hypothesis is advanced that more active competition has taken place in foreign markets which enabled Austrian manufacturing to increase its share in those markets. The reduction in profit margins was made possible by tax allowances i.e. by the quick write-off a considerable part of new investment. This tax allowances amounts to an interest free government loan to the investor, which in fact will not be repaid of the depreciation funds are reinvested immediately after the equipment is fully written off. The proportion of the industry's capital which is in this sense financed by the government increases over time as investment expands; a profit rate has to be earned only on the remaining capital stock, so that without reduction of the return on private capital the profit margins may be reduced. (The tax allowances thus amount to a virtual reduction of the capital coefficient which proceeds gradually over a long time.)The paper finally shows the relation between the share of savings and the share of corporate incomes in the total private income during the cycle. The share of saving moves with the cycle and this is made possible by a shift to corporate income.     

Two is not too many for monopoly

Many research contributions have investigated the identity of the leader in oligopolistic markets. As a general rule, this literature points to the leader being either the most efficient, the largest or the best informed player. However, there tend to be exceptions to this rule and it is unclear who will become the leader when firms at the same time are different in size, efficiency of production and/or the quality of the information they have. The present paper reveals insights regarding this last question. As such, it points to the elements that really matter to explain for leadership when firms are different from each other in more than one respect. It turns out that the most efficient firm becomes the leader, regardless whether or not its rival has invested in more capacity. While this result tends to be in line with the previous findings regarding the identity of the leader being the relatively more efficient firm, it contradicts the dominant firm scenario regarding price leadership. This is the result of enlarging the strategy space of the players, by including a buyout option. As such, the paper provides the foundations and hence a theoretical justification for price leadership out of a collusive motive. Since a priori the model also does not exclude a barometric price leadership outcome, it is appropriate to conclude that the buyout option truly is a collusive device strong enough to suppress other reasons for price leadership. Therefore, the arrangements observed in reality aiming at the implementation of buyout possibilities have to be watched very closely from an antitrust perspective.     

Knowledge Questions: Hayek,Keynes and Beyond

This paper discusses the knowledge problem in terms of both the use and generation of knowledge. This is analyzed in the context of Hayek's failure to respond to the Keynes Challenge—the claim that markets fail to produce relevant knowledge—by suggesting that in the aftermath of The General Theory he was not well-positioned to address that problem. Ironically, his post-World War II work in cognitive psychology, The Sensory Order, offers a theory of the generation of knowledge which can provide a useful analogy for understanding the generation of market-level knowledge.     

Public-Choice Analysis of a New International Organization: The International Sea-Bed Authority

The usefulness of the public-choice approach for a better understanding of international organizations can be demonstrated by applying it to the analysis of the structure and functions of a new international organization, the International Sea-Bed Authority, established in 1994, after two decades of negotiations under the auspices of the United Nations, with the aim to control the oceans' mineral resources beyond the limits of national jurisdictions (which have been proclaimed by the U.N. Assembly common heritage of mankind). First, the reasons for establishing this organization, whose basis is the common heritage of mankind nature of ocean resources, are examined under two aspects: 1) definition and protection of property rights; 2) environmental control of sea-bed mining activities. Secondly, the organization's decisionmaking system is presented, including such features as the assembly, council with chamber voting, finance committee with decision by consensus, features that balance the voting power of members and protect those countries that bear the financial responsibility for the budget. Finally, some comments are offered about more general aspects of the theory of international organizations: the bureaucracy (and diplomacy) of these organizations as well as the interdependence among international organizations, which opens the way to forms of international logrolling and makes it advisable for countries not to exit from these organizations, even when they have no primary interest in them.     

The greenhouse effect: Damages,costs and abatement

The buildup of so-called greenhouse gases in the atmosphere — CO₂ in particular-appears to be having an adverse impact on the global climate. This paper briefly reviews current expectations with regard to physical and biological effects, their potential costs to society, and likely costs of abatement. For a worst case scenario it is impossible to assess, in economic terms, the full range of possible non-linear synergistic effects. In the most favorable (although not necessarily likely) case (of slow-paced climate change), however, it seems likely that the impacts are within the affordable range, at least in the industrialized countries of the world. In the third world the notion of affordability is of doubtful relevance, making the problem of quantitative evaluation almost impossible. We tentatively assess the lower limit of quantifiable climate-induced damages at $30 to $35 per ton of CO₂ equivalent, worldwide, with the major damages being concentrated in regions most adversely affected by sea-level rise. The non-quantifiable environmental damages are also significant and should by no means be disregarded.The costs and benefits of (1) reducing CFC use and (2) reducing fossil fuel consumption, as a means of abatement, are considered in some detail. This strategy has remarkably high indirect benefits in terms of reduced air pollution damage and even direct cost savings to consumers. The indirect benefits of reduced air pollution and its associated health and environmental effects from fossil-fuel combustion in the industrialized countries range from $20 to $60 per ton of CO₂ eliminated. In addition, there is good evidence that modest (e.g. 25%) reductions in CO₂ emissions may be achievable by the U.S. (and, by implication, for other countries) by a combination of increased energy efficiency and restructuring that would permit simultaneous direct economic benefits (savings) to energy consumers of the order of $50 per ton of CO₂ saved. A higher level of overall emissions reduction — possibly approaching 50% — could probably be achieved, at little or not net cost, by taking advantage of these savings.We suggest the use of taxes on fossil fuel extraction (or a carbon tax) as a reasonable way of inducing the structural changes that would be required to achieve significant reduction in energy use and CO₂ emissions. To minimize the economic burden (and create a political constituency in support of the approach) we suggest the substitution of resource-based taxes in general for other types of taxes (on labor, income, real estate, or trade) that are now the main sources of government revenue. While it is conceded that it would be difficult to calculate the optimal tax on extractive resources, we do not think this is a necessary prerequisite to policy-making. In fact, we note that the existing tax system has never been optimized according to theoretical principles, and is far from optimal by any reasonable criteria.During the academic year 1989–90 Dr. Ayres was at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg, Austria.During the summer of 1989 Mr. Walter was a member of the Young Scientists' Summer Program at IIASA.     

International aspects of pollution control

Pollution is a by-product of production, is only gradually dissolved by the environment, and crosses national borders. The market outcome ignores the adverse effects of pollution and thus yields higher levels of output and pollution than would prevail under a supranational social planner which does care about pollution. In practice, governments often do not cooperate and this leads to outcomes of pollution and production in between the market outcomes and the outcomes under supra-national social planning. Absence of precommitment leads to lower emission charges, less cleaning-up activities and more pollution. Appropriate levels of emission charges under the various outcomes are a result of this analysis. Attention is also paid to investment in clean technology. The debate between optimists, who believe that higher production is compatible with sound environmental policy, and pessimists can be analysed in this way.Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the EAERE conference Environmental Cooperation and Policy in the Single European Market, Venice, Italy, 17–20 April, 1990, and the CentER conference Economics of the Environment, Tilburg, The Netherlands, 17–19 September, 1990. The paper has benefitted from the comments of the participants of these conferences, and particularly of the detailed comments of Henk Folmer and Ignazio Musu.     

Finance,investment and innovation: A theoretical and empirical comparative analysis

The paper compares the relative efficiency of country models in the relationship between finance and investments. Results, confirmed under three different panel data estimates (Arellano-Bond GMM method, random and fixed effect estimates) suggest that: i) the UK thick market reduces informational asymmetries for large firms and for those firms providing good signals to shareholders; ii) the Japanese vertical (between firms and banks) integration and horizontal (among firms) integration almost eliminates financial constraints (the horizontal integration effect) and equates agency costs across firms (the vertical integration effect). These results are consistent with the short-termist hypothesis which assumes that the Japanese economic system can process information more efficiently reducing managerial myopic behaviour and thereby determining positive effects on long term growth.     

Efficiency of Nonpoint Source Pollution Instruments: An Experimental Study

In nonpoint source pollution problems, the regulator does not observe each polluters individual emission, which prevents him from using the conventional policy instruments. Therefore, new instruments have been designed to regulate this type of pollution. In an experiment, we compare the efficiency of some of these instruments: an input-based tax, an ambient tax/subsidy, an ambient tax, and a group fine. We assume that polluters themselves are affected by environmental damages. A control session without any regulation is also carried out in order to study the status quo situation. Our experimental data show that the input tax and the ambient tax are very efficient and reliable, and the group fine is fairly efficient and reliable. These instruments improve social welfare with respect to the status quo. On the contrary, the ambient tax/subsidy decreases social welfare with respect to the status quo, and its effect is very unreliable.     

Convention, Social Order, and the Two Coordinations

The word coordination has two meanings, and thesemeanings are often conflated. One meaning, associated with ThomasSchelling, is seen in situations like choosing whether to driveon the left or the right; the drivers must coordinate to eachother's behavior. The other meaning, associated with FriedrichHayek, means that a concatenation of activities is arranged soas to produce good results. Along with the Schelling sense ofcoordination comes the notion of convention, such as drivingon the right. Some conventions are consciously designed; othersemerge without design (or are emergent). Along with the Hayeksense of coordination comes the notion of social order. Somesocial orders, such as the skeleton of activities within thefirm or within the hypothetical socialist economy, are consciouslyplanned. Other social orders, such as the catallaxy of the freesociety, function without central planning (or are spontaneous).Distinguishing between the two coordinations (and, in parallelfashion, between convention and social order) clarifies thinkingand resolves some confusions that have arisen in discussionsof coordination and spontaneous order. The key distinctionsare discussed in the context of the thought of, on the one hand,Menger, Schelling, David Lewis, and the recent path-dependencetheorists, and, on the other hand, Smith, Hayek, Polanyi, Coase,and the modern Austrian economists. The paper concludes witha typology that encompasses the several distinctions.     

Clean technology — Innovation and environmental regulation

The development and diffusion of clean technologies has an important role to play in preventing pollution. Government must address the issue of how firms can be given the necessary incentive to develop environmentally sound production techniques and products. This paper focus on how subsidies can — under certain restrictive conditions — stimulate innovation. Subsidization is usually assumed to involve unit subsidies for pollution reduction. Unit subsidies have little to do with the subsidy schemes in actual use. Our focus is on subsidy schemes specifically designed to promote the development of clean technologies through the use of grants/financial aid. Based on data from the development projects initiated through The Danish Clean Technology Programme we analyze how environmental innovations take place when the polluters, their suppliers and consultants are actively engaged in the development processes. The main merit of subsidy schemes like the Danish one is its direct focus on the innovation processes and the active incorporation of the network of firms surrounding the polluters. Our findings lead us to conclude that when it comes to subsidization, the role of government should be redefined. Government can act as a matchmaker by providing firms with informative incentives and necessary contacts for finding more efficient technological solutions to specific environmental problems.     

Two-settlement Systems for Electricity Markets under Network Uncertainty and Market Power

We analyze welfare and distributional properties of a two-settlement system consisting of a spot market over a two-node network and a single energy forward contract. We formulate and analyze several models which simulate joint dispatch of energy and transmission resources coordinated by a system operator. The spot market is subject to network uncertainty, which we model as a random capacity derating of an important transmission line. Using a duopoly model, we show that even for small probabilities of congestion (derating), forward trading may be substantially reduced, and the market power mitigating effect of forward markets (as shown in Allaz and Vila 1993) may be nullified to a great extent. There is a spot transmission charge reflecting transportation costs from location of generation to a designated hub whose price is the underlying for the forward contract. This alleviates some of the incentive problems associated with the forward market in which spot-market trading is residual. We find that the reduction in forward trading is due to the segregation of the markets in the constrained state, and the absence of natural incentives for generators to commit to more aggressive behavior in the spot market (the strategic substitutes effect). In our analysis, we find that the standard assumption of no-arbitrage across forward and spot markets leads to very little contract coverage, even for the case with no congestion. We present an alternative view of the market where limited intertemporal arbitrage enables temporal price discrimination by competing duopolists. In this framework, we assume that all of the demand shows up in the forward market (or that the market is cleared against an accurate forecast of the demand), and the forward price is determined using a market clearing condition.