GAMBLING IN CONTESTS WITH REGRET

This paper discusses the gambling contest introduced in Seel and Strack (2013, Gambling in Contests, Journal of Economic Theory, 148(5), 2033–2048) and considers the impact of adding a penalty associated with failure to follow a winning strategy. The Seel and Strack model consists of n‐agents each of whom privately observes a transient diffusion process and chooses when to stop it. The player with the highest stopped value wins the contest, and each player's objective is to maximize her probability of winning the contest. We give a new derivation of the results of Seel and Strack based on a Lagrangian approach. Moreover, we consider an extension of the problem to a behavioral finance context in the sense of regret theory. In particular, an agent is penalized when her chosen strategy does not win the contest, but there existed an alternative strategy that would have resulted in victory.     

Robust grain supply chain design considering post-harvest loss and harvest timing equilibrium

This paper presents a bi-level robust optimization model, where a food company maximizes its profit and minimizes post-harvest loss by optimally deploying grain processing/storage facilities and determining grain purchase price, while a group of spatially distributed non-cooperative farmers determine harvest time, shipment, storage, and market decisions under yield uncertainty and market equilibrium. The non-cooperative behavior of the food company and the farmers is represented by a bi-level Stackelberg leader follower’s game model with mixed-integer decision variables. The proposed model and solution approach are applied to case studies for Illinois and Brazil.     

Modelling regional policy scenarios in the agri-food sector: a case study of a Spanish region

The agri-food industry has several features of great importance for sustainable economic growth in rural areas. The objective of this work is to evaluate the effects associated with different scenarios of growth, and changes in the regional agri-food industry. These scenarios simulate changes in exports and imports, changes in technology and changes in the level of industrial integration. We develop a computable general equilibrium model calibrated for the region. Our results indicate that policies trying to improve the competitiveness and dynamism of strategic sectors as the agro-industrial complex in this regional economy exert positive effects on its growth and income, having notable impacts on local job markets but also in other sectors and activities linked through the whole production chain.     

Favouritism towards the poor and a discontinuous tax structure

This article aims to theoretically clarify two points. First, even though the government shows favouritism to the poor and wants to exempt low-income taxpayers and to secure the necessary income tax revenue by taxing only high-income taxpayers, the government nevertheless ends up taxing the poor. This is in opposition to favouritism and arises because of the government’s inability to observe the individual taxpayer’s income levels. Second, even without observing each taxpayer’s income level, if favouritism is sufficiently strong, then the government can discontinuously resolve such unintentional taxation.     

Reformulating Environmentally Constrained Traffic Equilibrium via a Smooth Gap Function

Various government laws have recently been enacted to alleviate the environmental deterioration of transportation systems. Environmental constraint is a valid means to explicitly reflect various environmental protection requirements imposed by the government. In this paper, we examine the environmentally constrained traffic equilibrium problem (EC-TEP), which is a fundamental tool for modeling and evaluating environmental protection requirements. Specifically, we provide an equivalent reformulation for the EC-TEP. The proposed reformulation adapts the concept of gap function to simultaneously reformulate the nonlinear complementarity conditions associated with the generalized user equilibrium conditions, environmental constraints, and conservation constraints as an equivalent unconstrained optimization problem. This gap function reformulation has two desirable features: (1) it can handle a general environmental constraint structure (linear or nonlinear; link-based or area-based) and a general link and route cost structure, enhancing the modeling adaptability and flexibility; (2) it is smooth and unconstrained, permitting a number of existing efficient algorithms for its solution. A gradient-based solution algorithm with a self-regulated averaging stepsize scheme is customized to solve the reformulated unconstrained optimization problem. Numerical examples are also provided to demonstrate the modeling flexibility of the proposed EC-TEP reformulation.     

Existence of equilibria in economies with externalities and non-convexities in an infinite-dimensional commodity space

We prove an equilibrium existence theorem for economies with externalities, general types of non-convexities in the production sector, and infinitely many commodities. The consumption sets, the preferences of the consumers, and the production possibilities are represented by set-valued mappings to take into account the external effects. The firms set their prices according to general pricing rules which are supposed to have bounded losses and may depend upon the actions of the other economic agents. The commodity space is L_∞(M,M,μ), the space of all μ-essentially bounded M-measurable functions on M.As for our existence result, we consider the framework of Bewley (1972). However, there are four major problems in using this technique. To overcome two of these difficulties, we impose strong lower hemi-continuity assumptions upon the economies. The remaining problems are removed when the finite economies are large enough.Our model encompasses previous works on the existence of general equilibria when there are externalities and non-convexities but the commodity space is finite dimensional and those on general equilibria in non-convex economies with infinitely many commodities when no external effect is taken into account.     

Production technologies in stochastic continuous time models

Properties of dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models can be revealed by either using numerical solutions or qualitative analysis. Very precise and intuition-building results are obtained by working with models which provide closed-form solutions. Closed-form solutions are known for a large class of models some of which, however, have some undesirable features such as potentially negative output. This paper offers closed-form solutions for models which are just as tractable but do not suffer from these shortcomings.     

金融稳定分析的宏观模型综述及展望

金融系统的稳定性水平是金融功能是否有效发挥的反映,加入WTO后中国政府对经济系统进行了诸多方面的改革,金融系统的稳定性得到明显提升,但也存有压力与风险。金融稳定分析的宏观模型包括扩展的宏观经济模型、动态随机一般均衡模型和网络模型。其中,动态随机一般均衡模型具有较好的现实拟合度,应用性较强。应根据中国的社会背景和特殊的金融制度,构建中国特色的动态随机一般均衡模型。     

基于博弈角度的营销道德失范研究

随着市场经济的不断发展,营销活动日益繁荣,同时也出现了越来越多的营销道德失范问题。营销道德的失范不仅损害了消费者利益,而且劣化了市场资源的配置。本文以当前我国营销道德失范的现状为切入点,运用博弈论,首先在信息对称的条件下,建立了完全信息下企业与消费者之间的静、动态博弈模型,研究表明：在静态博弈模型中,企业是否生产低质量的产品关键取决于政府对企业的处罚力度;在动态博弈模型中,从长远来看,企业将立足于长期利益,为消费者生产高质量的产品;其次,在信息不对称情况下,建立了＂逆向选择＂和＂道德风险＂模型;最后给出了治理营销道德失范的几点建议和对策,指出造成企业营销道德失范的原因,不外乎政府、企业和消费者三方的共同作用。因此,加强企业营销道德建设,规范企业的营销行为,也要从这三方面寻找答案。