Traders' Bidding Strategies on European Grain Export Refunds: An Analysis with Affiliated Signals

Using a multivariate distribution of traders' information with correlations, we specify the traders' bidding strategies on tenders of European soft wheat intervention stocks. We show that correlations may have opposing effects on the traders' bidding strategy, depending on their valuation of the grain. This structural approach allows us to estimate the traders' strategies using generalized method of moments procedures.     

Optimal Area-Yield Crop Insurance Reconsidered

The implementability of area-yield insurance contracts in the presence of symmetric and asymmetric information about the farmer's "beta" linking his yield to the risk-pool's yield is examined. In the presence of fixed costs and symmetric information Mahul's result that optimality requires setting the slope of the indemnity schedule equal to each farmer's beta is confirmed. When there is asymmetric information between the insurer and the farmer, however, this full-insurance contract is vulnerable to adverse selection, and therefore may not be implementable for general cost structures. The optimal area-yield insurance contract under asymmetric information is characterized.     

Aggregate Fluctuations and International Migration

In this paper, we study the role of short‐run factors such as business cycles or changes in employment rates in explaining international migration flows. First, we derive a model of optimal migration choice predicting that short‐run economic fluctuations trigger migration flows on top of the impact exerted by long‐run factors. Second, we empirically test the magnitude of the effect of these short‐run factors on migration flows. Our results indicate that both aggregate fluctuations and employment rates affect migration flows. Third, we provide evidence that the Schengen Agreement and the euro significantly increased the international mobility of workers between the member countries.uuuü     

Digitalisierungsschub in Firmen während der Corona-Pandemie

Wirtschaftsdienst - Durch die Corona-Pandemie haben digitale Technologien in Unternehmen an Bedeutung gewonnen. Auf Basis einer Betriebsbefragung des Instituts für Arbeitsmarkt- und...     

Implementable Ramsey-Boiteux Pricing in Agricultural and Environmental Policy

Agricultural producers frequently face price discrimination that is based either on characteristics of their products, or on the physical manner in which the product is produced. We consider how to set such discriminatory prices optimally and show that for a very broad range of production technologies, the first-best voluntary policy, which involves a modified version of Ramsey-Boiteux pricing, is implementable even in the presence of hidden knowledge by farmers about their types.     

Providers’ affiliation,insurance and collusion

This paper provides a theoretical analysis of the benefits for an insurance company to develop its own network of service providers when insurance fraud is characterized by collusion between policyholders and providers. In a static framework without collusion, exclusive affiliation of providers allows insurance companies to recover some market power and to lessen competition on the insurance market. This entails a decrease in the insured’s welfare. However, exclusive affiliation of providers may entail a positive effect on customers’ surplus when insurers and providers are engaged in a repeated relationship. In particular, while insurers must cooperate to retaliate against a fraudulent provider under non-exclusive affiliation, no cooperation is needed under exclusive affiliation. In that case, an insurer is indeed able to reduce the profit of a malevolent provider by moving to collusion-proof contracts when collusion is detected, and this threat may act as a deterrent for fraudulent activities. This possibility may supplement an inefficient judicial system: it is thus a second-best optimal anti-fraud policy.     

FOOD TRADE AND BIODIVERSITY EFFECTS

Pests create biodiversity effects that increase food production risks and decrease productivity when agricultural production is specialized. Pesticides contain these effects, but damage the environment and human health. When opening to trade, governments are tempted to restrict pesticide use because, with more food being imported, less pesticide is needed for domestic consumption. However, pesticide restrictions hinder the competitiveness of their agricultural sector on international markets. We show that restrictions on pesticides are more stringent under free trade than under autarky, which reduces the gains from trade, and that trade increases food price volatility.     

Free admission to museums and monuments: an exploration of some perceptions of the audiences

• This paper considers the theme of the audiences' perceptions of free admission in national French museums and monuments. The results show that, from an individual perspective, perceptions of free admission are linked to perceptions of price, money and payment, hence complementing perceptions expressed in a collective perspective (a symbolic, political measure causing either adhesion or rejection). These perspectives are generally put forward by both advocates and opponents of the measure in their discussions. These different visions of free admission have managerial implications for managers of museums and monuments.

Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Optimal environmental taxation and enforcement policy

We study the optimal environmental taxation and enforcement policy when (i) the regulator does not know the firms’ abatement costs, (ii) penalties for tax evasion are limited, and (iii) monitoring of pollution is costly. We show that the threat of being audited alter the usual firms’ incentives to over-estimate their abatement costs. In particular, depending on the firms’ abatement costs, the optimal policy may involve over or under-deterrence compared to the full information outcome. We then investigate the properties of a pollution standard. We show that this policy comes close to an environmental tax once the economic incentives of the accompanying enforcement policy are considered.     

Insurance law and incomplete contracts

We analyze how insurance law can mitigate moral hazard by allowing insurers to reduce or cancel coverage in some circumstances. We consider an incomplete contract setting in which the insurer may obtain information related to the policyholder's behavior through a costly audit of the circumstances of the loss. Court decisions are based on a standard of proof such as the balance of probabilities. We show that an optimal insurance law brings efficiency gains compared to the no-audit case. We also highlight the conditions under which the burden of proof should be on the insured, provided that insurers are threatened with sanctions for bad faith.