Dynamic Multi‐Activity Contests*

We develop a model of dynamic multi‐activity contests. Players simultaneously choose efforts in long‐run activities, observe each other's efforts in these activities, and then simultaneously choose efforts in short‐run activities. A player's long‐run and short‐run efforts complement each other in determining the player's probability of winning. We compare the outcomes of this two‐stage model to those of the corresponding model in which players choose efforts in all activities simultaneously. Interestingly, effort expenditures are always lower in the sequential multi‐activity contest than in the simultaneous multi‐activity contest. The implications of this result for the organization of military, litigation, innovation, academic, and sporting contests are highlighted.     

Airports and the air transportation system: Functional refinements and functional discovery

This paper examines the technological development of the airport and the air transportation system in order to identify opportunities for increased growth and development. The paper identifies two approaches to accomodating growth, which it terms functional refinement and functional discovery. The former refers to incremental improvements, the latter to the discovery of new technological forms and functions. Functional refinements condition and frequently constrain efforts towards functional discovery. For example, efforts to advance “demand management” may not be beneficial for the exploration of new uses for air transportation technology. The paper examines how efforts towards functional refinement might be reoriented towards fostering functional discovery, identifies parallels between the air transportation system and other infrastructure systems, and examines how efforts towards functional refinement that lock out functional discovery run counter to powerful social pressures for flexible, specialized production.     

An Ayresian View of Gandhian Economics

Economic waste stems from the abuse of power that interferes with the process of social provisioning. For Thorstein Veblen, waste stems from individual efforts to show superiority, corporate efforts to increase pecuniary returns without increasing industry, or national efforts to exert military dominance. For John Maynard Keynes, waste assumes the form of idle factories, unemployed workers, and unsold goods resulting from insufficient demand. From a broader perspective, waste results from the efforts of rentiers to increase their returns. Both dimensions of waste relate to the Fed and other central banks’ efforts to address the problem of social provisioning through the wealth effect. The ideas of Veblen and Keynes provide guidance for evaluating policy directed at enhancing the provisioning process. Based on Veblen’s ideas, policies should promote the life process and not conspicuous consumption. Based on Keynes ideas, policies should stimulate demand, increasing profits and, in turn, creating jobs.     

The art of seeing like a state: State building in Afghanistan, the DR Congo, and beyond

This paper considers the implications of James Scott’s Seeing Like a State (1998) and The Art of Not Being Governed (2009) for state-building efforts in Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). In Seeing Like a State, Scott warns of the problems associated with top-down planning efforts to improve the human condition. In The Art of Not Being Governed, Scott discusses the “art” of state avoidance and self-governance. These works have important insights for contemporary state-building processes, and we explore some of the applications in the context of Afghanistan and the DRC. We conclude with a discussion of the implications for current and future state-building efforts.     

Referendum and the choice between monarchy and republic in Greece

Drawing on the 1974 Greek parliamentary elections and constitutional referendum which abolished the monarchy, the paper employs a spatial decision model to examine the strategic use of a parliamentary election and a non mandatory referendum by an agenda setter. The parliamentary election bundles two issues, the right to form a government and the right to choose the form of state. This implies that the election campaign efforts to attract votes are different from the campaign efforts to win an election for government and a separate referendum for the form of state. The choice of the agenda setter turns out to depend on his costs of campaign efforts in the different contests relative to those of the opposition, his benefits to be gained from winning the different contests, his comparative electoral appeal and the probability that the referendum secures his favourite outcome.     

中国转型期地方政府行为取向及调控策略研究

本文基于多任务委托—代理的视角分析了中国转型时期的地方政府行为取向及其调控策略。地方政府既可以付出与中央政府利益一致的合作性努力,也可以付出与中央政府利益不一致的自私性努力,合作性努力水平和自私性努力水平取决于既定体制下的激励机制。在制度安排既定的情况下,中央政府既可以通过采取适当的补偿措施来提高地方政府的合作性努力水平,也可以通过适当的惩罚措施来降低地方政府的自私性努力水平,这其中有规律可循。     

Welfare effects of competitive lobbying efforts in international oligopoly markets

Conventionally, rent-seeking activities have been considered to deteriorate social welfare and to distort resource allocation. This paper examines whether rent-seeking behavior can improve social welfare by focusing on the welfare effects of firms’ competitive lobbying efforts when governments can impose market entry regulation against foreign firms. We demonstrate that competitive lobbying efforts can improve social welfare when such lobbying efforts are directed to reduce market entry barriers. In addition, social welfare can be maximized when the government shows the maximum sensitivity to the foreign firm's political contributions while maintaining competitive market structure. Moreover, it is shown that the dominant strategy for a domestic firm is to allocate more resources to R&D sectors while it is optimal for foreign firms is to exert more efforts in lobbying to reduce the market entry barriers when a government makes political economic approach in market entry regulations.     

Rent Seeking for Pure Public Goods: Wealth and Group's Size Heterogeneity

We study how between‐group wealth and size asymmetries affect aggregate rent‐seeking efforts when two groups compete for the allocation of a pure public good. Unlike with previous analyses on between‐group asymmetries, we measure the utility cost of rent‐seeking in terms of the loss in private consumption an individual faces when contributing to this activity. Our main result is that fewer between‐group asymmetries do not necessarily imply greater aggregate rent‐seeking efforts. The result is at odds with the commonly held notion that the more homogeneous the contestants in a static rent‐seeking model, the greater the aggregate rent‐seeking efforts.     

税收努力、征税机构与税收增长之谜

本文运用省级面板数据研究了中国税收收入高速增长的影响因素,主要考察了经济基本面和征税努力水平对于税收收入的影响。我们利用成对样本(paired sampling)的数据结构,使用工具变量处理了税收努力度量误差带来的内生性问题,估计了国税和地税机构的征税努力对于税收增长的不同影响。这种模型设定的好处是既考虑到一个地区的国税和地税面对着同样的经济基本面,同时又可以识别两个机构征税努力的增收效应所存在的差异。我们发现,GDP增长对于税收的增长有接近45%的解释力,征管努力对税收收入也有重要的贡献,地税局税收努力水平的边际效应要高于国税局的边际效应。     

Difference-Form Contests and the Robustness of All-Pay Auctions

In much of the existing literature on rent-seeking games, the outcome of the contest is either infinitely sensitive or relatively insensitive to contestants' efforts. The current paper presents a family of contest games that permit characterization of equilibrium for all levels of sensitivity of the outcome to contestants' efforts. Specifically, the outcome of the contest depends on the difference between efforts, which encompass the lottery and the all-pay auction as polar cases. The equilibrium converges to that of the all-pay auction as the probability of winning the prize grows infinitely sensitive to one's effort, and the main qualitative features of equilibrium persist over a large parameter region. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: D44, D72.     

论分税制下财政转移支付与地方财政努力差异——基于功能与地区多重分类考察的另类荷兰病分析

文章主要研究分税制下政府间转移支付与地区财政努力差异的关系.通过理论模型推导和对转移支付的实证检验发现:中国现行转移支付制度在总体上抑制了地方政府的财政努力.就区域效果而言,转移支付在促进东部发达省份财政努力的同时,抑制了中、西部落后地区的财政努力;就转移支付的功能类型而言,以税收返还为主的条件性转移支付会激励地方政府努力征税,而非条件性转移支付,包括财力性和专项转移支付将不同程度地抑制地方财政努力.这就产生了挤出效应与另类"荷兰病"的问题.     

制造商与零售商共同努力减少无缺陷退货的收益共享合同

针对制造商与零售商在共同努力减少客户无缺陷退货中的双边道德风险问题,本文分析了制造商和零售商的努力水平对无缺陷退货率的影响,运用委托-代理理论设计了双边道德风险下的收益共享合同,分析了各参数对合同的影响。结果表明,最优收益共享激励系数与制造商的努力弹性系数负相关,与零售商的努力弹性系数正相关,与产品的单位收益、产品的首次销售量以及双方的努力成本系数无关。     

Partnership to build research capacity

Today's nursing leaders are setting the stage for the next evolution--bringing together skilled clinicians and administrators with peers in education to create new approaches to leading the profession forward. Partnerships share goals, common purpose, mutual respect, willingness to negotiate and compromise, informed participation, information giving, and shared decision making. The shared practice academia effort between a public university and a private health care system situated in the island state of Hawai'i is described. The medical center and school of nursing pursued individual strategic efforts to build research capacity and used the opportunity to fund academic practice research projects. The mutual need and recognition of the high stakes involved, in concert with stable, committed leaders at all levels, were key to the early success of their efforts. Through the formal research partnership mechanism, a discrete focus was created for efforts and used to move to tactical, operational, and interpersonal integration in this relationship.     

Service delivery weaknesses within education and healthcare: Applying empirics from Kenya,Uganda, Tanzania,and Senegal

Civil servants such as teachers and doctors allocate their resources into service delivery that benefits society, and alternative efforts for income. With low salary or high cost of service delivery, or high value of alternative efforts, the latter may be chosen extensively. This may mean leaving one's job. Some idealists may focus loyally and exclusively on service delivery despite the challenges. Choosing alternative efforts cannot be eradicated, but its role can be reduced if one is aware of the logic of which factors impact how actors allocate their resources between service delivery and alternative efforts. We have used data from the education and healthcare sectors in the African countries of Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Senegal to show the deficient and poor service delivery within education and healthcare services. In both sectors, education and healthcare, and for all four countries, teachers spend far less than the designated time teaching pupils, and clinicians spend very little time with patients, per day.     

PEER TRANSPARENCY IN TEAMS: DOES IT HELP OR HINDER INCENTIVES?*

In a joint project involving two players of a two‐round effort investment game with complementary efforts, transparency, by allowing players to observe each other’s efforts, achieves at least as much, and sometimes more, collective and individual efforts relative to a nontransparent environment. Without transparency multiple equilibria can arise, and transparency eliminates the inferior equilibria. When full cooperation arises only under transparency, it occurs gradually: No worker sinks in the maximum amount of effort in the first round, preferring instead to smooth out contributions over time. If the players’ efforts are substitutes, transparency makes no difference to equilibrium efforts.     

The Erosion and Sustainability of Norms and Morale

I examine why the performance of an organization is often subject to gradual erosion. I assume that players are motivated partly by psychological factors, norms and morale, and that they are willing to exert extra efforts if others do so. I show that repeated random shocks induce the erosion of the extra efforts supported by norms and morale, but they do not completely decay; in the long run a certain range of efforts are sustainable. Hence different organizations typically enjoy diverse norms and morale, which persist for a long time, in the vicinity of the equilibrium determined by material incentives.     

Impact of the economic downturn on nursing schools

The challenges posed by the economic downturn on baccalaureate nursing schools in the southeast as it relates to their perceptions of changes in the number of applicants, acceptance rates, employer recruitment efforts, and student clinical and job placement were explored. Responses from deans and program directors indicated nursing schools are experiencing negative effects of the economic downturn in the form of graduates having difficulty finding employment, decreased recruitment efforts from prospective employers, difficulty locating clinical placements for students, and no change in faculty applicants despite an increase in undergraduate student applicants as well as graduate student applicants. These multiple factors combined could signal the death knell for programs that are ill-prepared to deal with such a crisis. Programs need to be aggressive in their efforts to draw health care recruiters as well as qualified faculty applicants to their campuses. Nursing schools must be able to clearly show why their graduates are superior to other programs' graduates when competing for both highly qualified faculty applicants and prospective student employers.     

The best-shot all-pay (group) auction with complete information

We analyze an all-pay group contest in which individual members’ efforts are aggregated via the best-shot technology and the prize is a public good for the winning group. The interplay of within-group free-riding and across-group competition allows for a wide variety of equilibria, according to how well groups overcome internal free-riding. In contrast with the existing literature, we derive equilibria of a symmetric model in which multiple agents per group are active. Our findings differ qualitatively from those of the individualistic all-pay auction: rents are not necessarily dissipated in equilibrium, total expected efforts vary across equilibria, and participation is expected to be greater. Moreover, equilibria with greater symmetry of behavior within a group are shown to have more “wasted” effort but also greater payoffs as overall efforts are lower. In contrast to standard economic intuition, free-riding can be beneficial for players as it reduces competition among groups. Examples of asymmetric group contests are also studied.     

Shadow prices and subsides in Botswana

The Government of Botswana recently has initiated a Financial Assistance Plan (FAP) to encourage goods production by second-best incentives designed to offset distortions in various prices given constraints which preclude first-best solutions. This innovative plan was adopted after careful consideration of other efforts to remedy distortions in other developing economies, and hopes to improve upon those efforts and thereby perhaps be a model for other countries. This paper analyzes FAP within the framework of the incentives created for a profit-maximizing firm. The results suggest that it is very difficult to devise indirect second-best policies if there is considerable substitution in production possible.