A note on temporal aggregation and serial correlation

Given a time series of daily price changes, one can estimate first-order serial correlation coefficient over one-day or T-day intervals. It is shown that these coefficients are generally not identical. Their temporal behavior is examined in this note.     

A note on estimating disequilibrium models with aggregation

When an aggregate disequilibrium is the result of disequilibrium in several submarkets, the usual maximum likelihood estimation, which is based on the min of aggregate demand and supply, represents a misspecification. The present paper compares ML with several nonlinear least squares methods that are appropriate for this situation. Monte Carlo experiments suggest that ML is robust with respect to the misspecification and may be preferable to the nonlinear least suqares methods in some situations.     

A note on Deaton's theorem on the undesirability of nonuniform excise taxation

The paper provides an extension and a new proof of Deaton's theorem on the undesirability of nonuniform excise taxation when income taxes are affine and preferences over consumption goods are separable from labour–leisure choices, homothetic, and identical across agents.     

An expository note on the composite commodity theorem

Summary This note offers an alternative derivation of the composite commodity theorem using only elementary economic and mathematical tools. It offers some insight as to why constancy of relative prices induces separability in the consumers optimization problem. It should be more readily accessible to students in upper level microeconomics courses and prove useful in the classroom in presenting this central theorem of economic analysis.The author gratefully acknowledges the useful comments made by John Fountain, Leslie Young and Peyton Young.     

A brief note on a non-existent theorem about the optimality of uniform taxation

This note attempts to clarify the relationship between the separability of utility into goods and leisure and the question of whether uniform commodity taxes are optimal. The failure of several authors to recognize subtle differences in assumptions has caused confusion.     

A simple proof of Nataf's theorem on consistent aggregation

In this paper we present a simple and short proof of Nataf's theorem on consistent aggregation for the case that all functions involved have non-zero first derivatives.     

The finite basis property and exact aggregation

An individual demand function is said to satisfy the finite basis property when its set of Engel curves has a finite spanning subset. In the present letter we discuss why this property underlies the theory of exact aggregation.     

A bibliographical note on a theorem of Hardy,Littlewood, and Polya

A well-known theorem of Hardy Littlewood and Polya together with its more recent generalizations is stated here. Some of these results were applied recently in the economic literature. The economic interpretation of the mathematical theorems is mentioned and references are included.     

A note on introducing a zero‐line of welfare as an escape route from Arrow's theorem

Since Sen's insightful analysis of Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, Arrow's theorem is often interpreted as a consequence of the exclusion of interpersonal information from Arrow's framework. Interpersonal comparability of either welfare levels or welfare units is known to be sufficient for circumventing Arrow's impossibility result. But it is less well known whether one of these types of comparability is also necessary or whether Arrow's conditions can already be satisfied in much narrower informational frameworks. This note explores such a framework: the assumption of (ONC + 0), ordinal measurability of welfare with the additional measurability of a zero‐line, is shown to point towards new, albeit limited, escape routes from Arrow's theorem. Some existence and classification results are established, using the condition that social orderings be transitive as well as the condition that social orderings be quasi‐transitive.     

A note on the factor-price frontier

Conclusions For an economist the possibility of an upward sloping factorprice frontier is extremely surprising. It has been shown that although such a factor-price frontier is theoretically possible, it is not very likely that it can occur under given economic and technical conditions since it would imply that capitalists are a class of borrowers (from nature) whereas we can be fairly sure that they are a class of lenders.I am indebted to Prof. E. Streissler for helpful comments.     

A note on the duty of disclosure

This letter studies the possibility of voluntary breach of contract in the presence of new information. If the information had to be disclosed prior to the agreement, it is shown by example that all individuals may be worse off than if the act of disclosure is itself voluntary.     

A note on the diffusion of innovation

The paper deals with the process of substitution between technologies in a framework of increasing returns to scale. The approach stresses the interaction between capacity expansion and market demand as explanations of the diffusion of technologies into their niches. The demand and supply sides of the diffusion process are therefore brought together to determine simultaneously patterns of output and prices.It analyzes the dynamics of the substitution path, where a logistic diffusion process for the new technology is assumed, and determines the substitution curve between the old technology and the new one.     

A note on the pricing of IPOs

This paper studies the pricing of IPOs in a tractable model in which an investment bank faces some investors with superior information. We show how this can lead to underpricing and we make a number of empirical predictions.