Optimal Income Taxation and Job Choice

In this paper, we study optimal income taxation when different job types exist for workers of different skills. Each job type has some feasible range of incomes from which workers choose by varying labor supply. Workers are more productive than others in the jobs that suit them best. The model combines features of the classic optimal tax literature with labor variability along the intensive margin, with the extensive‐margin approach where workers make discrete job choices and/or participation decisions. We find that first‐best maximin utility can be achieved in the second‐best, and marginal tax rates below the top can be negative or zero.     

Does price dispersion increase with quality? Evidence from the online diamond market

This article empirically investigates the relationship between price dispersion and price level. Searches seem more valuable for products of high quality, but buyers may have little incentive to search since such products are less frequently purchased. The extent of price dispersion is examined using a sample of around 160 000 diamonds offered for sale online. Estimates from a two-stage econometric strategy show that price dispersion increases significantly with quality. An explanation is that buyers of high-quality gemstones pay little attention to the price of these diamonds and even more so if they perceive high prices as signals of quality and rarity of the diamonds they intend to purchase.     

Essential data, budget sets and rationalization

According to a minimalist version of Afriat’s theorem, a consumer behaves as a utility maximizer if and only if a feasibility matrix associated with his choices is cyclically consistent. An “essential experiment” consists of observed consumption bundles $(x_{1}, \ldots , x_{n})$ and a feasibility matrix $\varvec{\alpha }$ . Starting with a standard experiment, in which the economist has access to precise budget sets, we show that the necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of a utility function rationalizing the experiment, namely, the cyclical consistency of the associated feasibility matrix, is equivalent to the existence, for any budget sets compatible with the deduced essential experiment, of a utility function rationalizing them (and typically depending on them). In other words, the conclusion of the standard rationalizability test, in which the economist takes budget sets for granted, does not depend on the full specification of the underlying budget sets but only on the essential data that these budget sets generate. Starting with an essential experiment $(x_{1}, \ldots , x_{n}; \varvec{\alpha }$ ) only, we show that the cyclical consistency of $\varvec{\alpha }$ , together with a further consistency condition involving both $(x_{1}, \ldots , x_{n})$ and $\varvec{\alpha }$ , guarantees the existence of a budget representation and that the essential experiment is rationalizable almost robustly, in the sense that there exists a single utility function which rationalizes at once almost all budget sets which are compatible with $(x_{1}, \ldots , x_{n}; \varvec{\alpha }$ ). The conditions are also trivially necessary.     

Legitimacy-Seeking Organizational Strategies in Controversial Industries: A Case Study Analysis and a Bidimensional Model

Controversial industry sectors, such as alcohol, gambling, and tobacco, though long-established, suffer organizational legitimacy problems. The authors consider various strategies used to seek organizational legitimacy in the U.K. casino gambling market. The findings are based on a detailed, multistakeholder case study pertaining to a failed bid for a regional supercasino. They suggest four generic strategies for seeking organizational legitimacy in this highly complex context: construing, earning, bargaining, and capturing, as well as pathways that combine these strategies. The case analysis and proposed bidimensional model of generic legitimacy-seeking strategies contribute to limited literature on organizational legitimacy in controversial industry sectors. In addition, beyond organizations active in controversial contexts, this study and its implications are useful for individuals and organizations supporting or opposing the organizational legitimacy of organizations in controversial industries.     

Limits to agri-environmental schemes uptake to mitigate human–wildlife conflict: lessons learned from Flamingos in the Camargue,southern France

Agri-environment schemes (AES) favouring the maintenance of hedges were implemented in the Camargue (southern France) as it has previously been proven to reduce the risk of damage caused by Greater Flamingo incursions into rice fields. Given the persistent incursions, we estimated the economic cost of damage from 2007 to 2009, the uptake rate of hedge-related AES and explored the limits of these schemes as a mitigation effort. Semi-structured and key informant interviews, site mapping and field visits were made to verify claims and estimate damage. Number of plants/m² and fertile stems/plant were estimated on 1,498 and 312 grids, respectively, spread over 26 rice fields. Damaged areas of rice fields forayed by flamingos presented from 1.35 to 3.06 t/ha lower yield than undamaged areas. We estimated 228€/ha average loss in forayed fields for a total of 400,000€ in yield loss in 2008. Administrative constraints limited AES and free seedlings distribution, preventing the problem from being addressed at an appropriate scale. The trivial financial support for hedge management relative to more lucrative AES with lower constraints resulted in low uptake rate. We propose that modifications of AES take into account landscape factors over administrative boundaries and that the financial support for AES be scaled up relative to other subsidies in order to address the efforts necessary to achieve landscape changes to reduce human–wildlife conflict.     

A study of proportionality and robustness in economies with a commonly owned technology

Abstract. Studying one-input one-output economies, we say that an allocation is proportional if the input-output ratio is identical among agents and if each agent maximizes her welfare given this ratio. We propose three equity axioms based on this definition, and we use them to compare the main solutions to this simple equity problem. We also combine efficiency, robustness axioms and our proportionality axioms to characterize two solutions. Received: 11 June 1997 / Accepted: 26 May 2000     

Social assessment of technology and some of its international aspects

Search for some means of social management of technology has become a major concern for science and technology policy in recent years. Social Assessment of Technology (SAT) is considered as a potentially important instrument of this new orientation of policy. The concept of social assessment of technology leads to a reappraisal of the role of science and technology in a contemporary society, both with regard to policy, and to final objectives. It is a new approach to a better informed decision-making. Though it is of interest to all segments of the policy-making process, one would expect that social assessment of technology should be closely linked to technology policy. However, from the institutional point of view, technology has no place of its own. The term “technology” was only recently added to that of science in the relevant national government agencies. This is a purely formal link. To arrive at an operational outline of technology policy, a much deeper understanding of technology and the innovative process in general is still necessary.The lack of an appropriate institutional “niche” makes it particularly difficult to envisage technology assessment studies at an international level. The work accomplished by OECD is of interest, since it is the first experience of its kind. Theoretical and factual investigations had led to the publication of a comprehensive analysis, Society and the Assessment of Technology, and a report on Methodological Guidelines for Social Assessment of Technology. This was followed by an attempt to test the social assessment approach in applying it to real problems of interested member countries. International cooperation in the field of social assessment of technology is hampered by a number of major difficulties such as changing objectives of national policy, secrecy, race for a competitive advantage, insufficient diffusion and understanding of the concept itself, and the unwillingness or inability of decision-makers to consider middle- and long-term policies.