Economists and the ARC Large Grants Scheme: A Brief Report

We examine awards to economics in recent years under the Australian Research Council (ARC) Large Grants Scheme and speculate briefly on the effects of the new National Competitive Grants Programme. The primary determinant of number of awards by panel is number of applications. While no ARC rule guarantees panels will preserve success-to-application ratios by discipline, this seems a good approximation for economics and many other Social Science panel disciplines, though limited evidence suggests economics assessors give somewhat lower scores. Economics ARC award rates per staff member resemble those in other social sciences but are significantly smaller than those in philosophy, history, biology and chemistry.     

Nash implementing non-monotonic social choice rules by awards

Summary. By a slight generalization of the definition of implementation (called implementation by awards), Maskin monotonicity is no more needed for Nash implementation. In fact, a weaker condition, to which we refer as almost monotonicity is both necessary and sufficient for social choice correspondences to be Nash implementable by awards. Hence our framework paves the way to the Nash implementation of social choice rules which otherwise fail to be Nash implementable. In particular, the Pareto social choice rule, the majority rule and the strong core are almost monotonic (hence Nash implementable by awards) while they are not Maskin monotonic (hence fail to be Nash implementable in the standard framework).Received: 12 April 2004, Revised: 18 March 2005, JEL Classification Numbers: D 79.I thank François Maniquet, Efe Ok and Ipek Ozkal-Sanver for their valuable contributions. The paper is part of a project on Electoral System Design supported by Bilgi University Research Fund.     

Individually rational rules for the division problem when the number of units to be allotted is endogenous

We study individually rational rules to be used to allot, among a group of agents, a perfectly divisible good that is freely available only in whole units. A rule is individually rational if, at each preference profile, each agent finds that her allotment is at least as good as any whole unit of the good. We study and characterize two individually rational and efficient families of rules, whenever agents' preferences are symmetric single-peaked on the set of possible allotments. Rules in the two families are in addition envy-free, but they differ on whether envy-freeness is considered on losses or on awards. Our main result states that (a) the family of constrained equal losses rules coincides with the class of all individually rational and efficient rules that satisfy justified envy-freeness on losses and (b) the family of constrained equal awards rules coincides with the class of all individually rational and efficient rules that satisfy envy-freeness on awards.     

Entitling the Pollutee: Liability versus Standard under Private Information

This paper considers and compares two different legal means -- full liability and standard – to reduce and to regulate pollution at a local level accounting for private information about benefits and costs. The familiar polluter pays principle makes the polluter liable for any damage. Since the courts lack information about the true damage the pollutee can and presumably will overstate this damage. Nevertheless, voluntary arrangements bypassing the courts exist (e.g., for Coasean reasons). However, such out-of court arrangements fail to improve in many cases the inefficient allocation of pollution due to agency costs. Given these unsatisfactory consequences of the polluter pays principle even after allowing for contracts around the law, we propose a modification of standards: the pollutee is entitled that a certain standard is satisfied, yet can trade this right for financial compensations. Contracts induced by this legal rule are countervailing (the optimal mechanism switches between subsidies and payments and first best efficiency holds at both ends) and this characteristic allows such a privatized standard to track the first best quite well and (often) better than the polluter pays principle. This relative ranking under private information is the opposite of the one that holds under uncertainty (here liability dominates the standard).JEL classification: D62, D82     

A Merchant Mechanism for Electricity Transmission Expansion

We propose a merchant mechanism to expand electricity transmission based on long-term financial transmission rights (FTRs). Due to network loop flows, a change in network capacity might imply negative externalities on existing transmission property rights. The system operator thus needs a protocol for awarding incremental FTRs that maximize investors’ preferences, and preserves certain currently unallocated FTRs (or proxy awards) so as to maintain revenue adequacy. In this paper we define a proxy award as the best use of the current network along the same direction as the incremental awards. We then develop a bi-level programming model for allocation of long-term FTRs according to this rule and apply it to different network topologies. We find that simultaneous feasibility for a transmission expansion project crucially depends on the investor-preference and the proxy-preference parameters. Likewise, for a given amount of pre-existing FTRs the larger the current capacity the greater the need to reserve some FTRs for possible negative externalities generated by the expansion changes.     

我国科技奖励制度的结构问题及优化措施

我国科技奖励制度在结构上存在人物奖缺乏、奖励对象狭窄、缺乏国际性奖励、单项奖太少、缺乏基础科学奖励等问题。相应地提出,以奖励科技人员为主、拓宽科技奖励对象、增设国际性奖励、重视基础科学奖励、调整政府奖与民间奖的侧重点等优化措施。     

A Risk‐Dominant Allocation: Maximizing Coalition Stability

This paper presents a rule to allocate a coalition’s worth for superadditive games with positive externalities. The allocation rule awards each member their outside payoff, plus an equal share of the surplus. The resulting allocation maximizes coalition stability. Stable coalitions are Strong Nash equilibria since no subset of members has an incentive to leave. Similarly, no subset of non‐members has an incentive to join a stable coalition if the game is concave in this region. The allocation is risk‐dominant. All stable coalitions are robust to the maximum probability of 50% that players’ deviate from their individual best‐responses. The paper compares the allocation to the Shapley value and the Nash bargaining solution, and illustrates why these traditional rules result in small coalitions when applied to issues such as international environmental agreements.     

Environmental Liability Law and Induced Technical Change – The Role of Discounting

We analyse the incentives of environmental liability law for inducing progress to emission abatement technology. We consider three liability rules: strict liability, a negligence rule with an emission norm as the due care standard, and a double negligence rule which combines the emission standard with an abatement technology norm. In the case of distortive discounting, i.e. where the private discount rate deviates from the social one, we show, how the level of distortion influences the ranking of liability rules, according to the criterion of generated social cost.     

产品责任损害赔偿问题思考

在因产品缺陷而引起的人身和财产损害案件频发的今天，必须强化产品责任损害赔偿法律制度，以充分体现对消费者合法权益予以切实保护的立法目的。我国产品责任法应当明确精神损害赔偿，建立惩罚性损害赔偿制度。     

国家科技奖励绩效评价指标体系生成机理探析

本质上，国家科技奖励绩效评价指标体系生成是国家科技奖励绩效基本概念从抽象到具体的操作化过程。遵循“基本概念—评价维度—测量指标”的逻辑理路，探析国家科技奖励绩效评价指标体系的生成机理。研究发现，在国家科技奖励绩效评价指标体系生成过程中，概念操作化是逻辑起点，评价维度解构是逻辑中介，测量指标筛选与赋权是逻辑终点。在生成机理剖析基础上构建的绩效评价指标体系更接近国家科技奖励绩效的本质内涵，更能体现国家科技奖励的核心绩效。     

Buyer Liability and Voluntary Inspections in International Greenhouse Gas Emissions Trading: A Laboratory Study

This paper reports a preliminary laboratoryexperiment in which traders make investments toincrease the reliability of tradableinstruments that represent greenhouse gasemissions allowances. In one half of thesessions these investments are unobservable,while in the other half traders can invitecostless and accurate inspections that makereliability investments public. We implement abuyer liability rule, so that if emissionsreductions are unreliable (i.e., sellersdefault), the buyer of the allowances cannotredeem them to cover emissions. We find thatallowing inspections significantly increasesthe reliability investment rate and overallefficiency. Prices of uninspected allowancesusually trade at a substantial discount due tothe buyer liability rule, which provides astrong market incentive for sellers to investin reliability.     

关于我国专利奖励立法若干问题的思考

在我国专利与科技奖励双轨制之下，专利奖励是在专利授权基础上的奖励，其实质是一种科技行政奖励。在实体上它要服从科技奖励的规律，在程序上必须遵循行政奖励程序。对专利奖励的法律规制，最根本是要通过立法的完善，包括完善专利奖励的一般的原则性规定，明确有关专利奖励条件、范围、标准等关于奖励结构的实体性规定，最后是从程序法的角度对专利奖励程序和法律救济进行规制。     

Runaway judges? Selection effects and the jury

Reports about runaway jury awards have become so common thatit is widely accepted that the U.S. jury system needs to be'fixed'. Proposals to limit the right to a jury trial and increasejudicial discretion over awards implicitly assume that judgesdecide cases differently than juries. We show that there arelarge differences in mean awards and win rates across juriesand judges. But if the types of cases coming before juries aredifferent from those coming before judges, mean award and winrates may differ even if judges and juries would make the samedecisions when faced with the same cases. We find that mostof the difference in judge and jury mean awards can be explainedby differences in the sample of cases coming before judges andjuries. On some dimensions, however, there remain robust andsuggestive differences between judges and juries.     

CHILD SUPPORT, ROUTINE INCOME WITHHOLDING, AND POST-DIVORCE INCOME

Policymakers are proposing child support reform as a way of reducing "welfare dependency" and countering the "feminization of poverty" while increasing the well-being of children living in single-parent households. The federal government and some states have begun to change laws regarding establishment of child support awards and collection of payments. The 1988 Family Support Act mandates routine income withholding of child support payments—i.e., collecting child support directly from the payer's paycheck. This article assesses the effects on post-divorce income by using data from a demonstration of routine withholding in ten Wisconsin counties. Unfortunately, these data conclude that routine income withholding has little effect on post-divorce income, at least in the year following divorce. The authors suggest three requirements for substantially increasing post-divorce income, as well as child support: (i) More family court cases must establish awards, (ii) The amount of those awards must be greater. (Hi) The collection rate for those who have awards must improve.     

A Complete Characterization of Efficient Liability Rules: Comment

In a recent article, Jain and Singh (2002) prove that a condition they call negligence liability is necessary and sufficient for any liability rule to be efficient. In this note I criticize their result on two accounts: First, their result crucially depends on implicit restrictions they impose on the liability assignment function. If we drop the assumption that the liability apportionment between two non-negligent parties is constant for all combinations of non-negligent care levels, the equivalence between the condition of negligence liability and the efficiency of liability rules breaks down. Second, their attempt to drop the assumption of uniqueness for the social optimum improves the generality of the model at a substantial cost, since it must be accompanied by a new assumption that is possibly even more unrealistic. The importance of the uniqueness assumption is shown in a simple discrete care model, in which comparative negligence may lead to an inefficient outcome when the existence of two social optima leads us to interpret due care as a varying standard based on the other partys actual choice.     

The impact of award uncertainty on settlement negotiations

Legal disputes are often negotiated under the backdrop of an adjudicated award. While settlements are common, they are not universal. In this paper, we empirically explore how uncertainty in adjudicated awards impacts settlement negotiations. To do so, we develop an experimental design to test how increases in variance and positive skewness of the award distribution impact negotiations and settlement rates. We find increases in variance decrease settlement rates, while increases in skewness generally increases settlement rates. We also gather individual measures of risk aversion and prudence, and incorporate these measures into the analysis to test for heterogeneous treatment effects. Overall, our results suggest that highly variable adjudicated awards can contribute to the excess use of inefficient litigation, while more positively skewed awards can reduce the use of inefficient litigation.     

A new solution to the problem of adjudicating conflicting claims

Summary. For the problem of adjudicating conflicting claims, we consider the requirement that each agent should receive at least 1/n his claim truncated at the amount to divide, where n is the number of claimants (Moreno-Ternero and Villar, 2004a). We identify two families of rules satisfying this bound. We then formulate the requirement that for each problem, the awards vector should be obtainable in two equivalent ways, (i) directly or (ii) in two steps, first assigning to each claimant his lower bound and then applying the rule to the appropriately revised problem. We show that there is only one rule satisfying this requirement. We name it the “ rule”, as it is obtained by a recursion. We then undertake a systematic investigation of the properties of the rule.Received: 7 September 2004, Revised: 21 April 2005, JEL Classification Numbers: C79, D63, D74.William Thomson: Correspondence toWe thank Christopher Chambers, Youngsub Chun, Tarík Kara, Çağatay Kayí, Juan Moreno-Ternero, Toyotaka Sakai, and Michel Truchon for their comments. We also thank a referee for useful comments. This paper was presented at Columbia University, CORE, Bilkent University, Sabancí University, Université Laval, and Caltech, and at the Mallorca Review of Economic Design meeting. Thomson acknowledges support from the NSF under grant SES-0214691.     

中国科技奖励制度存在的问题与建议

科学、完善的科技奖励体制,对于促进科技事业发展、激励科技创新十分重要。随着中国科技体制改革的不断深入,中国的科技奖励制度出现了新的问题。为了充分发挥科技奖励的积极作用,需要进一步完善中国的科技奖励制度。     

ORIGINS OF THE TORT REFORM MOVEMENT

The tort reform movement in the United States reached its peak during 1986, when 39 states passed legislation to limit court awards. The explosion of litigation and jury awards in the US. frequently was stated as the cause for the liability insurance crisis. This paper explores the origins of the tort reform crisis. It concludes that the crisis was produced by the natural instability of the liability insurance industry and by the impact of technology on specific coverage lines.     

美国科技奖励机制的研究

自20世纪50年代以来,美国政府为鼓励科研人员对科学技术的基础研究和创新发展,逐步建立起与美国科技及经济发展相适应的科技奖励机制。近些年来,美国完善的科技奖励体系作为科技体制内部的重要环节,对规范美国科技的发展方向,持续推动美国的科技进步起到了重要作用。本文通过对美国国家科技奖励和美国社会科技奖励两个层次的研究,详细介绍各种奖励的推荐和评审制度。