How to win a decision in a confederation

This paper deals with collective decision making within a group of independent states. The right to choose the public policy is delegated from the central authority to one of the states through a bidding procedure among the group state members. We identify the following tradeoff: competition among states yields higher transfers to the central authority, but the outcome tends to be less efficient than what it is when states negotiate prior to the decision making process. We extend and illustrate the model by means of a public good game involving several heterogeneous states.     

Restructuring as a signal: a simple formalization

Several studies have stressed that, contrary to initial expectations, state-owned firms at the beginning of the transition undertook painful measures to adjust to the new economic environment. This paper investigates this behaviour in a simple game theoretic framework. It is argued that the massive amount of lay-offs created by state-owned firms during the initial phase of the transition can be interpreted as a signal directed to the banking sector in order to obtain more favourable financing conditions for the subsequent process of restructuring. The conclusions are strongly supported by Polish firm-level empirical evidence.
JEL classification: P31, C72.     

创建学习型企业是关系到企业生存与发展的战略大计

惟一持久的竞争优势，是具备比竞争对手学习得更快的能力，简言之，竞争的核心是学习力。学习型企业是全体成员全身心投入，并有持续增长的学习力的企业；是能让企业成员体验到工作中生命意义的企业；是通过学习能创造自我，扩展创造未来能量的企业。一个企业只有当它是学习型组织的时候，才能具备快速应变市场的能力，才能充分发挥员工人力资本和知识资本的作用，也才能实现企业的最终目标。未来成功的企业必然是学习型的企业。     

Why a well-paid nurse is a better nurse

In an article subtitled "Why is a Badly Paid Nurse a Good Nurse?" economist Anthony Heyes argues that nursing wages should be kept low. Counter arguments are provided based on what the authors consider more adequate economic analysis.     

Computing a quasi-perfect equilibrium of a two-player game

Refining an algorithm due to Koller, Megiddo and von Stengel, we show how to apply Lemke’s algorithm for solving linear complementarity programs to compute a quasi-perfect equilibrium in behavior strategies of a given two-player extensive-form game of perfect recall. A quasi-perfect equilibrium is known to be sequential, and our algorithm thus resolves a conjecture of McKelvey and McLennan in the positive. A quasi-perfect equilibrium is also known to be normal-form perfect and our algorithm thus provides an alternative to an algorithm by von Stengel, van den Elzen and Talman. For the case of a zero-sum game, we devise variants of the algorithm that rely on linear programming rather than linear complementarity programming and use the simplex algorithm or other algorithms for linear programming rather than Lemke’s algorithm. We argue that these latter algorithms are relevant for recent applications of equilibrium computation to artificial intelligence.     

On a generalization of a class of production functions

In Appl. Econ. Lett. 18 (2011), 1777–1784, as a natural generalization of some famous production models with two inputs, C.A. Ioan and G. Ioan introduced a new class of production functions with constant return to scale, called sum production function, and proved three theorems of characterization for such production models. In this article, we give new and more simple proofs of these theorems, extending also the results to the case of increased/decreased return to scale. The generalization to the case of an arbitrary number of inputs is also discussed.