A NOTE ON THE FORMAL TREATMENT OF EXPLOITATION IN A MODEL WITH HETEROGENOUS LABOR

The paper presents a formal generalization of Marx's analysis of exploitation and prices in economies in which categories of labor are distinguished according to their unequal ability to create exchange value. Measures of exploitation of categories of labor which are consistent with both the Price of Net Product‐Unallocated Purchasing Power (PNP‐UPP) (New Interpretation) and the traditional interpretation of Marx's theory of value are defined which aggregate consistently over labor categories and sectors. In order to measure rates of exploitation from real economic data some additional assumption about relative rates of exploitation (which Marx often explicitly assumes to be equal) is required.     

On the economics of R&D and technological collaborations: Insights and results from the project colline

Research collaborations involve co-production and exchange of knowledge across organisational boundaries. They involve governance of intellectual property rights and partners' use of collectively produced knowledge. The principal findings arise from case studies of consortia governance in biotechnology and software and substantial variety in arrangements is identified. This variety may be explained by the appropriability of knowledge in particular research domains as well as by the nature of the knowledge generated. Consequences of governance rules are explored for European research consortia and for collective standards making activities. The analysis indicates several policy conclusions: government policy has an important role in overcoming market failures in consortia formation; adoption of any uniform intellectual property rights model for consortia would be likely to reduce research productivity; policies aimed at stimulating consortia formation must take account of the nature of knowledge that is to be exchanged.     

Efficient budget balancing cartel equilibria with imperfect monitoring

Summary We modify the infinitely repeated Cournot game with imperfect monitoring of Green and Porter (1984) and Abreu, Pearce and Stacchetti (1986) to include heterogenous products and the possibility of balanced budget side payments (Holmström 1982). It is shown that a transfer mechanism which induces the efficient outcome exists under a reasonable technical assumption in contrast to the preceding authors. Intuitively, the existence of an observable random price vector rather than a single price makes it possible to identify likely defectors, eliminating the need for collective punishments.This paper is based on the last chapter of Demougin's dissertation at the University of Western Ontario.     

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Effects of Securities Transaction Taxes on Depth and Bid-Ask Spread

This note investigates the effects of introducing a transaction tax on depth and bid-ask spread using a static model where a competitive market maker faces informed and liquidity traders. When the degree of information asymmetry is low, an increase in the transaction tax can result into a smaller rise in the selling price and the depth may even increase in some cases. When information asymmetry is high, the dealer could increase the selling price more than the tax and sometimes lowers the depth. This can result in a market shutdown if the liquidity trader is driven out of the market. We thank Vincent Reinhart and Walter Fisher for helpful discussions. Special thanks are also due to an anonymous referee and the editor C.D. Aliprantis for insightful comments and suggestions which have helped us to improve the paper substantially. The usual disclaimer applies.     

The long-term volume of East Europe's foreign trade: An estimate

The transformation process of East European (EE) countries led to the disappearance of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, the former Soviet-bloc economic integration scheme, as well as to other changes in the foreign trade sector of those economies. This study seeks to identify the potential long run modifications in the volume of trade of EE countries by using a well-established model employed in the foreign trade literature, the gravity equation. Quantitative results suggest that in the next decades trade between East and West European countries could double from its present level.     

Are Returns to Investment Lower for the Poor? Human and Physical Capital Interactions in Rural Vietnam

If the gains from investment depend on knowledge, but households cannot hire skills, then poorly educated households will achieve lower returns than educated ones. If the income‐poor are less well educated, then they will also have lower returns to investment. The paper tests this argument for the case of irrigation in Vietnam, a setting where existing irrigation can be treated as exogenous at the household level with appropriate controls for the determinants of facility placement. Strong complementarities between household education and irrigation expansion suggest that, unless disparities in education are redressed, reforms will generate an inequitable growth process in Vietnam.     

The future of food demand: understanding differences in global economic models

Understanding the capacity of agricultural systems to feed the world population under climate change requires projecting future food demand. This article reviews demand modeling approaches from 10 global economic models participating in the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP). We compare food demand projections in 2050 for various regions and agricultural products under harmonized scenarios of socioeconomic development, climate change, and bioenergy expansion. In the reference scenario (SSP2), food demand increases by 59–98% between 2005 and 2050, slightly higher than the most recent FAO projection of 54% from 2005/2007. The range of results is large, in particular for animal calories (between 61% and 144%), caused by differences in demand systems specifications, and in income and price elasticities. The results are more sensitive to socioeconomic assumptions than to climate change or bioenergy scenarios. When considering a world with higher population and lower economic growth (SSP3), consumption per capita drops on average by 9% for crops and 18% for livestock. The maximum effect of climate change on calorie availability is ?6% at the global level, and the effect of biofuel production on calorie availability is even smaller.     

Alternative modeling for long term risk

In this paper, we propose an alternative approach to estimate long-term risk. Instead of using the static square root of time method, we use a dynamic approach based on volatility forecasting by non-linear models. We explore the possibility of improving the estimations using different models and distributions. By comparing the estimations of two risk measures, value at risk and expected shortfall, with different models and innovations at short-, median- and long-term horizon, we find that the best model varies with the forecasting horizon and that the generalized Pareto distribution gives the most conservative estimations with all the models at all the horizons. The empirical results show that the square root method underestimates risk at long horizons and our approach is more competitive for risk estimation over a long term.