Crime and punishment in the “American Dream”

We observe that countries where belief in the “American dream”(i.e., effort pays) prevails also set harsher punishment for criminals. We know that beliefs are also correlated with several features of the economic system (taxation, social insurance, etc). Our objective is to study the joint determination of these three features (beliefs, punitiveness and economic system) in a way that replicates the observed empirical patterns. We present a model where beliefs determine the types of contracts that firms offer and whether workers exert effort. Some workers become criminals, depending on their luck in the labor market, the expected punishment, and an individual shock that we call “meanness”. It is this meanness level that a penal system based on “retribution” tries to detect when deciding the severity of the punishment. We find that when initial beliefs differ, two equilibria can emerge out of identical fundamentals. In the “American” (as opposed to the “French”) equilibrium, belief in the “American dream” is commonplace, workers exert effort, there are high powered contracts (and income is unequally distributed) and punishments are harsh. Economists who believe that deterrence (rather than retribution) shapes punishment can interpret the meanness parameter as pessimism about future economic opportunities and verify that two similar equilibria emerge.     

Specifying “regime” — A framework for defining and describing regimes in transition research

It is more and more agreed by research and policy that a long-term sustainability of industrialized societies cannot be achieved without fundamental changes at the level of different societal subsystems, such as the agricultural, transportation or water management systems. This view has lead to an increase in the amount of research carried out about the so-called “transitions”. Transitions comprise long-term, fundamental change in societal subsystems and are seen as encompassing co-evolutionary and mutually reinforcing processes in the economic, technological, institutional and socio-cultural domains. Transition research aims at understanding transitions and at finding methods that facilitate change directed towards societal goals (so-called “transition management”).This paper adds to the growing body of concepts of this young research strand. It suggests a framework for defining and describing “regimes”, the systems resulting from the broad and interdisciplinary view taken by transition research. The concept “regime” is of central importance for transition research, since it defines the level of societal systems on which transitions are mainly analysed. What actually is “the regime” to be researched and possibly managed is however usually not given through clear system boundaries but is a matter of framing and deliberation. In order to guide processes of regime identification, the paper develops five defining characteristics of regimes and gives a definition based on them. Further a method useful to structure and graphically represent knowledge about a regime is introduced. Such a structuring of knowledge is an important first step to understand how a regime “works”.     

Environment versus growth — A criticism of “degrowth” and a plea for “a-growth”

In recent debates on environmental problems and policies, the strategy of “degrowth” has appeared as an alternative to the paradigm of economic growth. This new notion is critically evaluated by considering five common interpretations of it. One conclusion is that these multiple interpretations make it an ambiguous and rather confusing concept. Another is that degrowth may not be an effective, let alone an efficient strategy to reduce environmental pressure. It is subsequently argued that “a-growth,” i.e. being indifferent about growth, is a more logical social aim to substitute for the current goal of economic growth, given that GDP (per capita) is a very imperfect indicator of social welfare. In addition, focusing ex ante on public policy is considered to be a strategy which ultimately is more likely to obtain the necessary democratic-political support than an ex ante, explicit degrowth strategy. In line with this, a policy package is proposed which consists of six elements, some of which relate to concerns raised by degrowth supporters.     

Foresight and innovation in the context of industrial clusters: The case of some Italian districts

The “territory” is widely recognized in the literature on business strategy as a critical driver of industrial competitiveness (see, as an example, Porter, The Competitive Advantage of Nations). The generation and exploitation of new knowledge, both tacit and explicit, through the process of socialization, articulation, combination and internalization (see Nonaka and Takeuchi, The Knowledge-Creating Company) is essential to enable innovation of processes and products of “local” firms.Our recent Foresight exercises in the metal working and machinery district of Lecco and in the silk district of Como show that Foresight can play an important role in creating and exploiting new knowledge, and that different methodologies can be more or less effective to this aim.Critical technology list and interactive workshops, with the participation of entrepreneurs of SMEs and technologists, are more suited to foster the transfer of technologies that have overcome the initial stage of the life cycle and that have been already applied in other sectors. However, when radical innovations are needed in order to face the challenges posed by global competition, other methodologies, as Scenarios, are more appropriate. Even if these approaches are complex and time and resource consuming, they may be very effective in actively involving the most relevant private and public stakeholders of a district, and in making them to envisage the long term future of the economic, social, and cultural structure of their district. In this way Foresight drives the small entrepreneurs, the district stakeholders and the medium and large size firms to play the critical roles of Nonaka and Takeuchi's “frontline employees”, “senior managers” and “middle managers” in their “knowledge creating company”: the first ones grasp what the district is; the second ones build the vision of what it ought to be; the third ones, serve as a bridge between the future and the present.     

A new necessary condition for implementation in iteratively undominated strategies

We uncover a new necessary condition for implementation in iteratively undominated strategies by mechanisms that satisfy the “best element property” where for each agent, there exists a strategy profile that gives him the highest payoff in the mechanism. This class includes finite and regular mechanisms. We conclude that either the quasilinearity-like assumptions of available sufficiency results cannot be completely dispensed with or some mechanisms that do not satisfy the best element property must be employed. We term the condition “restricted deception-proofness.” It requires that, in environments with identical preferences, the social choice function be immune to all deceptions, making it then stronger than incentive compatibility. In some environments the conditions for (exact or approximate) implementation by mechanisms satisfying the best element property are more restrictive than previously thought.     

International migration and “educated unemployment”

This paper provides a novel explanation of “educated unemployment”, which is a salient feature of the labor markets in a number of developing countries. In a simple job-search framework we show that “educated unemployment” is caused by the prospect of international migration, that is, by the possibility of a “brain drain”. In addition, the analysis shows that a developing country may end up with more educated workers despite the brain drain and educated unemployment.     

Social interaction and economic organization: Toward an integrative microeconomic model

In the context of increasingly complex economies, with information more and more complicated to handle, social interaction may allow spontaneous co-operation and be more efficient than market or state regulations to overcome co-ordination and information problems. This article provides a theoretical model that compares three “pure forms” of economic organization: state-controlled production, unregulated market, and voluntary organization. We model the behavior of agents who are embedded in a social structure that is characterized by three parameters: the intensity of socialization, the size of individual social space, and the overall level of trust in society. We then study how social interaction parameters influence the relative efficiency of the three different forms of organization.     

Unbundling the local loop

We study competition for high bandwidth services in the telecommunications industry by introducing the possibility of unbundling the local loop, where leased lines permit the entrant to provide services without building up its own infrastructure. We use a dynamic model of technology adoption and study the incentives of the entrant to lease loops and compete “service-based”, and/or to build up a new and more efficient infrastructure and compete “facility-based”, given the rental price.We show that the incumbent sets too low a rental price for its loops; hence, the entrant adopts the new technology too late from a social welfare perspective. The distortion may appear not only on the timing of technology adoption but also on the type (quality) of the new technology to be adopted. We also show that while regulating the rental price may suffice to achieve socially desirable outcomes, a sunset clause does not improve social welfare.     

Measuring fossil resource inequality—A case study for the UK between 1968 and 2000

This paper quantifies fossil resource inequalities amongst income quintiles in the UK between 1968 and 2000. It calculates a resource-based Gini coefficient using an input-output based resource allocation model.The results show that the Gini coefficient for total fossil resource consumption grew by 24% over the time period. By comparison the Gini coefficient for overall household expenditure rose by only 13%. The increase in resource inequality was prompted by the rising demand by high income quintiles for goods and services such as: “fuel and light” (heating and lighting the home), “car use” (private transportation), “recreation”, “travel” and “other services”. The analysis shows further that the Gini coefficient for “direct” fossil resources (“fuel and light” and “car use”) was lower and rose less steeply than the Gini coefficient for fossil resources embodied in other goods and services (indirect fossil resource requirements).Investigation into the drivers behind direct and indirect resource inequalities suggests a number of policy conclusions. Firstly, it is clear that policy initiatives to reduce fossil resource requirements (and the associated climate change impacts) must pay careful attention to distributional differences. Additionally, increased attention needs to be paid to the inequalities associated with indirect fossil resources consumption as well as the more visible direct resource inequalities.     

Law enforcement and transition

We present a simple model to analyze law enforcement problems in transition economies. Law enforcement implies coordination problems and multiplicity of equilibria due to a law abidance and a fiscal externality. We analyze two institutional mechanisms for solving the coordination problem. A first mechanism, which we call “dualism”, follows the scenario of Chinese transition where the government keeps direct control over economic resources and where a liberalized non-state sector follows market rules. The second mechanism we put forward is accession to the European Union. We show that accession to the European Union, even without external borrowing, provides a mechanism to eliminate the “bad” equilibrium, provided the “accessing” country is small enough relative to the European Union. Interestingly, we show that accession without conditionality is better than with conditionality because conditionality creates a coordination problem of its own that partly annihilates the positive effects of expected accession.     

Does a ‘non-committed’ government always generate lower social welfare than its ‘committed’ counterpart? Strategic trade policy when consumer surplus matters

We show that social welfare in the setup where the government lacks the full ability to commit to its trade policies may exceed the social welfare when the government possesses full commitment power if consumer surplus is part of the social welfare function. This is never the case in the standard, “third market” framework of strategic trade policy. We provide two examples in which consumer surplus matters: the “home market” and the “intra-industry trade” setup. The policy instruments under consideration are import tariffs and export subsidies and there are R&D spillovers from the domestic to the foreign firm.     

Is inventor network structure a predictor of cluster evolution?

Geographical clusters are significant drivers of regional economic growth and competitiveness in today's economy. Recent studies have shown that geographically limited knowledge diffusion which results from inventor movements within clusters is a facilitating factor to regional innovation output and therefore to the development of clusters. However, it remains unclear whether the dynamics of inventor movements can be used as an indicator for different stages of cluster progression. In this study, using patent co-authorship data, we construct inventor networks for two telecom clusters, New Jersey and Texas. Based on the longitudinal analysis of inventor network properties and interviews with the key inventors maintaining the networks, we seek to gain a better understanding of 1) how the properties of inventor networks across the two clusters reflect their difference in fundamental “typology” of clusters; and 2) are the patterns of inventor network structures and properties over time indicative of the change in viability of the clusters. Our findings suggest that the cluster “typology” is a key factor determining the structure of the inventor networks in a geographical cluster. Over time, as the economic and social conditions of a cluster change, the regional inventor networks change their performance accordingly. Importantly, the cluster “typology” may be a significant moderating factor for the relationship between the inventor network performance and the cluster's development.     

Strategic analysis of petty corruption: Entrepreneurs and bureaucrats

This paper develops a game-theoretic model of “petty corruption” by government officials. Such corruption is widespread, especially (but not only) in developing and transition economies. The model goes beyond the previously published studies in the way it describes the structure of bureaucratic “tracks,” and the information among the participants. Entrepreneurs apply, in sequence, to a “track” of two or more bureaucrats in a prescribed order for approval of their projects. Our first result establishes that in a one-shot situation no project ever gets approved. This result leads us to consider a repeated interaction setting. In that context we characterize in more detail the trigger-strategy equilibria that minimize the social loss due to the system of bribes, and those that maximize the expected total bribe income of the bureaucrats. The results are used to shed some light on two much advocated anti-corruption policies: the single window policy and rotation of bureaucrats.     

Between a rock and a soft place: Ecological and feminist economics in policy debates

The field of ecological economics includes both economic analysis on the one hand, and discussions of normative values and visions for society, on the other. Using feminist insights into cultural beliefs about the relative “hardness” and “softness” of these two sides, this essay discusses how ecological economists can use this unique “between” space in order to better inform policy. The current crisis of global climate change, it is argued, requires that economists move beyond modeling and measurement, while ecological thinkers need to re-examine beliefs about markets and profit.     

Modelling the fiscal reaction functions of the GIPS based on state-varying thresholds

We introduce non-linear fiscal reaction functions with endogenously estimated state-varying thresholds to capture the behaviour of fiscal policy authorities during “good” and “bad” times. These thresholds vary with the level of debt, the economic cycle and a financial pressure index.     

Rationalizable implementation

We consider the implementation of social choice functions under complete information in rationalizable strategies. A strict version of the monotonicity condition introduced by Maskin is necessary under the solution concept of rationalizability. Assuming the social choice function is responsive, i.e. in distinct states it selects distinct outcomes, we show that strict Maskin monotonicity is also sufficient under a mild “no worst alternative” condition. In particular, no economic condition is required. We discuss how our results extend when the social choice function is not responsive.     

On S-curves and tipping points

In his discussion in this journal of Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near, Modis criticizes Kurzweil's loose characterization of the “knee” of a growth curve. Likewise, the “tipping points” described by Gladwell (The Tipping Point) are clearly relevant to forecasting systems, but Gladwell did not mathematically identify such points. Both concepts refer to a point on the curve where growth accelerates dramatically and sustains itself. What can be said in a rigorous way about knees and tipping points in growth systems?The answer has to do with the number of parameters of the growth curve, and the (probabilistic) model underlying the growth curve. Using probability theory and computational experiments, this paper clarifies these points for the logistic and Bass curves (identifying an unambiguous tipping point for the latter), and explores the merits of a 3-parameter model of innovation adoption. It concludes that if forecasters are to deal scientifically with the now-established management notion of “tipping points,” a 3-parameter model is needed. The paper also resolves four minor but annoying paradoxes in the growth curve literature.     

Interdependent preferences and segregating equilibria

This paper shows that models where preferences of individuals depend not only on their allocations, but also on the well being of other persons, can produce both large and testable effects. We study the allocation of workers with heterogeneous productivities to firms. We show that even small deviations from purely “selfish” preferences leads to widespread workplace skill segregation. That is, workers of different abilities tend to work in different firms, as long as they care somewhat more about the utilities of workers who are “close”. This result holds for a broad class and distribution of social preferences.     

Myopia, redistribution and pensions

This paper reviews a number of recent contributions that study pension design with myopic individuals. Its objective is to explore how the presence of more or less myopic individuals affects pension design when individuals differ also in productivity. This double heterogeneity gives rise to an interesting interplay between paternalistic and redistributive considerations, which is at the heart of most of the results that are presented. The main part of the paper is devoted to the issue of pension design when myopic individual do not save “enough” for their retirement because their “myopic self” (with a high discount rate) emerges when labor supply and savings decisions are made. Some extensions and variations are considered in the second part. In particular we deal with situations where labor disutility or preferences for consumption are subject to “habit formation” and where sin goods have a detrimental effect on second period health. Myopic individuals tend to underestimate the effects of both habit formation and sinful consumption, which complicates public policy.     

The structure of strategy-proof social choice — Part I: General characterization and possibility results on median spaces

We define a general notion of single-peaked preferences based on abstract betweenness relations. Special cases are the classical example of single-peaked preferences on a line, the separable preferences on the hypercube, the “multi-dimensionally single-peaked” preferences on the product of lines, but also the unrestricted preference domain. Generalizing and unifying the existing literature, we show that a social choice function is strategy-proof on a sufficiently rich domain of generalized single-peaked preferences if and only if it takes the form of voting by issues (“voting by committees”) satisfying a simple condition called the “Intersection Property.”Based on the Intersection Property, we show that the class of preference domains associated with “median spaces” gives rise to the strongest possibility results; in particular, we show that the existence of strategy-proof social choice rules that are non-dictatorial and neutral requires an underlying median space. A space is a median space if, for every triple of elements, there is a fourth element that is between each pair of the triple; numerous examples are given (some well-known, some novel), and the structure of median spaces and the associated preference domains is analysed.