Contests with multiple alternative prizes: Public-good/bad prizes and externalities

We study contests in which there are multiple alternative public-good/bad prizes, and the players compete, by expending irreversible effort, over which prize to have awarded to them. Each prize may be a public good for some players and a public bad for the others, and the players expend their effort simultaneously and independently. We first prove the existence of a pure-strategy Nash equilibrium of the game, then establish when the total effort level expended for each prize is unique across the Nash equilibria, and then summarize and highlight other interesting and important properties of the equilibria. Finally, we discuss the effects of heterogeneity of valuations on the players’ equilibrium effort levels and a possible extension of the model.     

Many-to-one matching markets with externalities among firms

We study a labor market described by a many-to-one matching market with externalities among firms in which each firm’s preferences depend not only on workers whom it hires, but also on workers whom its rival firms hire. We define a new stability concept called weak stability and investigate its existence problem. We show that when the preferences of firms satisfy an extension of substitutability and two new conditions called increasing choice and no external effect by an unchosen worker, then a weakly stable matching exists. We also show that a weakly stable matching may fail to exist without these restrictions.     

货币政策和宏观审慎政策的关联及启示——基于英格兰银行的经验

时至今日,宏观审慎政策在内涵、工具和框架等方面快速发展,不仅政策目标更加清晰,工具类型更加丰富,相关理论基础也在不断完善。作为危机后形成的新政策框架,宏观审慎政策在工具有效性、作用机制、政策框架设计及与货币政策的关系方面都还有待深入研究。特别是在制度框架中,如何考虑宏观审慎政策与货币政策的关联,合理设计政策决策框架均已成为关键。对中国而言,系统风险识别、监测与分析更加复杂、困难,需要对宏观审慎政策开展更加精细、深入研究,尤其应吸收借鉴国际经验,建立、完善适合中国的宏观审慎政策框架。基于此,本文首先对宏观审慎政策的理论基础、政策目标及工具等进行系统综述,而后从两类政策关联中涉及的三个重要问题出发,着重分析宏观审慎政策与货币政策之间关系,并分别从组织架构设计、货币政策框架改革、金融政策框架设计等方面,系统介绍了英格兰银行在货币政策和宏观审慎政策框架改革的经验,重点阐述英格兰银行如何实现理论发展与制度设计的较好融合。最后,给出我国宏观审慎政策发展的若干启示和政策建议。     

Introduction: Quality of Life Indicators

Economic growth has increased the potential for a materially more fulfilling life. But economic growth has a price: it undermines the contributions of households, communities, and nature, on which all economic activity depends. How can we make visible, in economic terms, the qualities that are lost as a consequence of excessive economic activity? In the spirit of these critical discussions, Feminist Economics has initiated this issue's exploration of quality of life: Which aspects of life do economists regard as essential to the concept? What can we learn from disciplines whose traditions of quality of life research are older than ours? The ten articles that follow suggest, in the brief form allowed by the format, a number of different ways to approach these questions.     

地方化经济、城市化经济与劳动生产率——基于中国制造业四位数行业的实证研究

本文基于2003年中国四位数行业制造业数据,实证分析了产业外部性的两种重要形式——地方化经济和城市化经济对劳动生产率的影响。我们发现,从整个制造业来讲,地方化经济和城市化经济都促进了劳动生产率的提高。同时,我们就地方化经济和城市化经济是否存在产业间的差异进行了实证分析,发现地方化经济在大部分产业都发挥显著的促进作用,而仅有少数技术含量相对高的产业支持城市化经济。     

State-imposed solutions to negative externalities: employment impact of pollution abatement policy

Musgrave was acutely aware that many private activities, both consumption and production, generate negative externalities. Advocates for an active government rely on this concept to justify public sector regulation of private activities. Regulations and mandates, along with penalties for non-compliance, are the primary instruments used by government to bring about the “correct” level of output whenever private output gives rise to negative externalities such as environmental pollution. This study in effect offers a case study of the Clean Air Act on employment, i.e., it empirically investigates whether pollution abatement costs have had a negative impact on manufacturing employment in the U.S. Conventional microeconomic theory suggests that there is a trade-off between environmental protection outlays and manufacturing activity, i.e., higher pollution abatement compliance costs borne by industries may contribute to plant shutdowns, lower production levels and lay-offs, and/or lack of investment, thereby leading to diminished manufacturing employment. Existing studies fail to offer a clear conclusion as to the impact of existing environmental protection measures on manufacturing activity. Using state-level data for 2001, this study finds that government-imposed pollution abatement costs have had a statistically significant negative impact on manufacturing employment in the U.S. Richard J. Cebula, Shirley and Philip Solomons Eminent Scholar.     

An analysis of the impact of swine CAFOs on the value of nearby houses

The impact of 39 swine confined or concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) in Black Hawk County, Iowa on 5,822 house sales is explored by introducing a new variable that more accurately captures the effects of prevailing winds, exploring potential adverse effects within concentric circles around each CAFO, managing selection bias, and incorporating spatial correlation into the error term of the empirical model. Large adverse impacts suffered by houses that are within 3 miles and directly downwind from a CAFO are found. Beyond 3 miles, CAFOs have a generally decreasing adverse impact on house prices as distance to the CAFO increases.     

Green auctions: A biodiversity study of mechanism design with externalities

This paper uses a mechanism design approach to study the biodiversity improvement in a territory, where the government is the principal and the landholders are the agents. In particular, I analyze an optimal mechanism that considers multidimensional bid which includes both the biodiversity improvement of the project and its cost. Additionally, this mechanism incorporates the externality (either positive or negative) that a biodiversity project causes in the surrounding agents who decided not to participate. Specifically, I assume that externalities enter in the cost function of the nonparticipating landholders. I show that, in the case of negative externalities, the government will implement a transfer function which is decreasing in the landholder's efficiency level. On the other hand, in the case of a positive externality, paradoxically the government may be interested in the nonparticipation of the most efficient landholders.     

How can IMF policy eliminate country moral hazard and account for externalities?

Costly crisis prevention has positive external effects, which leads to free-riding of governments on each other's efforts. “Ordinary” IMF loans aggravate existing externalities, reinforcing the under-investment problem. We consider the reform proposals of the “Meltzer commission” in both loan and insurance models and show how the IMF can eliminate country moral. The efficiency-ensuring loan policy accounts for given externalities and involves effort-contingent discounts on interests or the extension of credit volume. Similar results hold for the insurance framework. Ex ante participation requires that smaller countries be “subsidized” by large ones, or that IMF policy consider distributional aspects in addition to efficiency.     

Industrial structure and innovation - evidence from European regions

Whether the composition of industrial activity influences innovation is the key question of this paper. The analysis is based on a model that integrates different kinds of diversity measures aiming at capturing Jacobs externalities, a production specialisation measure aiming at capturing Marshall-Arrow-Romer (MAR) externalities and regions as well as sector specific variables. Tested with an extended sample of 153 European regions and 16 manufacturing sectors, the estimates suggest that both kinds of externalities significantly influence innovation, although the influence of Jacobs externalities is more important in the context of high density regions as well as for high tech sectors.JEL Classification: R00, O18, O31Lydia Greunz: The author wishes to thank Henri Capron and two anonymous referees for their useful comments and suggestions. An earlier version of this paper was presented at Eindhoven Centre for Innovation Studies, January 2004, Eindhoven, The Netherlands.