Adverse Selection in Health Insurance Markets: A Classroom Experiment

Adverse selection as it relates to health care policy will be a key economic issue in many upcoming elections. In this article, the author lays out a 30-minute classroom experiment designed for students to experience the kind of elevated prices and market collapse that can result from adverse selection in health insurance markets. The students should come away from the experiment understanding why adverse selection leads to high prices on good quality insurance and why it forces healthy individuals into low quality plans. Additionally, the experiment helps students think about the market characteristics that make health insurance particularly vulnerable to problems of asymmetric information. Finally, the experiment connects the adverse selection problem with key features of the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.     

On the Efficiency of Competitive Markets for Emission Permits

It is typical for economists andpolicy makers alike to presume that competitivemarkets allocate emission permits efficiently.This paper demonstrates that competition in theemission permits market cannot assureefficiency when the product market isoligopolistic. We provide the conditions underwhich a bureaucratic mechanism is welfaresuperior to a tradeable emission permitssystem. Price-taking behaviour in the permitsmarket ensures transfer of licenses to the lessefficient in abatement firms, which then becomemore aggressive in the product market,acquiring additional permits. As a result, theless efficient firms end up with a higher thanthe welfare maximizing share of emissionpermits. If the less efficient in abatementfirms are also less efficient in production,competitive trading of permits may result inlower output and welfare.     

Teaching Nash Equilibrium and Dominance: A Classroom Experiment on the Beauty Contest

Abstract: The authors' aim in this article was to show how the use of classroom experiments may be a good pedagogical tool to teach the Nash equilibrium (NE) concept. The basic game is a version of the beauty contest game (BCG), a simple guessing game in which repetition lets students react to other players' choices and converge iteratively to the equilibrium solution. The authors perform this experiment with undergraduate students with no previous training in game theory. After four rounds, they observe a clear decreasing tendency in the average submitted number in all groups. Thus, the findings show that by playing a repeated BCG, students quickly learn how to reach the NE solution.     

Endogenous Entry and Exit in Common Value Auctions

We develop and experimentally test a model of endogenous entry, exit, and bidding in common value auctions. The model and experimental design include an alternative profitable activity (a safe haven) that provides agentspecific opportunity costs of bidding in the auction. Each agent chooses whether to accept the safe haven income or forgo it in order to bid in the auction. Agents that enter the auction receive independently-drawn private signals that provide unbiased estimates of the common value. The auctioned item is allocated to the high bidder at a price that is equal to the high bid. Thus the market is a first-price sealed-bid common value auction with endogenous determination of market size.     

Your Place in Space: Classroom Experiment on Spatial Location Theory

The authors detail an urban economics experiment that is easily run in the classroom. The experiment has a flexible design that allows the instructor to explore how congestion, zoning, public transportation, and taxation levels determine the bid–rent function. Heterogeneous agents in the experiment compete for land use using a simple auction mechanism. Using the data that is collected, a bid–rent function is derived, and the experimental treatment is altered over the course of three sessions to uncover core concepts in urban economics. Moreover, this provides a tangible experience that can be used to help undergraduates relate to urban issues such as the steep rent gradient found around many larger colleges and universities.     

Comment

How well does competitive theory explain the outcome in experimental markets. The authors examined the results of a large number of classroom trading experiments that used a pit-trading design found in Experiments with Economic Principles, an introductory economics textbook by Bergstrom and Miller. They compared experimental outcomes with predictions of competitive-equilibrium theory and with those of a simple profit-splitting theory. Neither theory was entirely successful in explaining the data, although in the first rounds of trading there was significant profit splitting and, as traders became more experienced, outcomes were closer to those predicted by competitive theory.     

A Monopoly Classroom Experiment

The author uses a simple classroom experiment to develop the economic model of monopoly. As a pedagogical tool, the experiment introduces students to the nature of the monopoly problem and motivates them to think of the associated efficiency issues as a divergence between private benefits and social contributions. As a test of economic principles, the experiment highlights the role of information and fairness ideals in determining economic outcomes.     

Theory and Application of Linear Supply Function Equilibrium in Electricity Markets

We consider a supply function equilibrium (SFE) model of interaction in an electricity market. We assume a linear demand function and consider a competitive fringe and several strategic players having capacity limits and affine marginal costs. The choice of SFE over Cournot equilibrium and other models and the choice of affine marginal costs is reviewed in the context of the existing literature. We assume that bid rules allow affine or piecewise affine non-decreasing supply functions by firms and extend results of Green and Rudkevitch concerning the linear SFE solution. An incentive compatibility result is proved. We also find that a piecewise affine SFE can be found easily for the case where there are non-negativity limits on generation. Upper capacity limits, however, pose problems and we propose an ad hoc approach. We apply the analysis to the England and Wales electricity market, considering the 1996 and 1999 divestitures. The piecewise affine SFE solutions generally provide better matches to the empirical data than previous analysis.     

Equilibrium Dynamics in a Two-Sector Model with Taxes

In this paper we are concerned with the equilibrium dynamics of a two-sector model of endogenous growth with distortionary taxes. We show that for certain parameters values and tax schemes every equilibrium orbit—except the steady state solution—is non-interior; i.e., there are times in which one of the sectors is inactive. This analysis confirms that in multisector models the set of easily checkable, universal conditions that can guarantee the interiority of equilibrium solutions is rather limited. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: D90, E22.     

Wealth Distribution and Imperfect Factor Markets: A Classroom Experiment

The author presents a simple exercise to demonstrate how initial property distribution can affect final wealth patterns in developing areas of the world. The simulation is a variant of the Monopoly board game in which students role play different members of a market in which they each face different rules of credit access and salary patterns. The property distribution and new mortgage rules reflect the reality of many developing areas. The simulation can be completed in one full class period and has proven successful in making students more sensitive to wealth distribution issues. Students have suggested several variations of this simulation to make it applicable across more settings.     

The Democratic Efficiency Debate and Definitions of Political Equilibrium

An ongoing debate has been occurring within public choice for over a decade concerning the efficiency of democracy. Virginia Political Economy holds that political markets perform very differently from traditional markets. Chicago Political Economy, exemplified by the work of Becker and Wittman, maintains that political equilibrium, properly defined, is relatively efficient. I argue that the debate can be understood at least partially in methodological terms: Chicago views politics exclusively within the equilibrium framework of traditional economics, while Virginia draws at least implicitly on Austrian economics' view of the economy as a disequilibrium process. I contend that the factors which public choice scholarship has identified as distinguishing politics from markets—rational ignorance, majority rule, collective outcomes—affect the performance of politics as a process even if political equilibrium is relatively efficient.     

A Rent-Seeking Experiment for the Classroom

Abstract: Recent research has demonstrated that active learning techniques improve student comprehension and retention of abstract economic ideas such as rent seeking. Instructors can reinforce the concept of rent seeking with a classroom game, particularly one involving real money. The authors improve upon a game first introduced by Goeree and Holt (1999) and later expanded upon by Bischoff and Hofmann (2002). The authors present a version of the game in which students participate in an all-pay auction, risking their own money, and discover first hand the potential inefficiencies of rent seeking. The authors suggest extensions of the rent-seeking game, including discussions of social welfare effects, equity, campaign finance reform, tax simplification, and congressional reforms designed to limit the influence of rent seeking in the economy.     

差异化战略与竞争优势的可持续性——理论与案例研究

将产品本身的差异性引入霍特林模型,并以深圳华强北电子卖场和小米手机为案例对象,剖析了其差异化战略,从理论和案例两个方面对差异化战略形成的竞争优势的特点进行初步探索。结果显示:与低成本战略相比,差异化战略带给企业的是能实现可持续发展的竞争优势,能使企业在竞争中获得稳定的垄断势力,从而保持较高的盈利水平。最后提出企业实施差异化战略的建议。     

略论文化市场均衡中的第三方力量

主要考察文化市场均衡问题。回顾了国内外文化市场研究的现状,明确了文化市场中的第三方概念,讨论了文化市场中供给、需求和由它们形成的文化市场均衡类型,分析了第三方对于文化市场所产生的影响,并提出了繁荣文化市场的若干建议。     

Classroom Games: A Prisoner's Dilemma

This survey of intermediate microeconomic textbooks will be helpful to those in the throes of selecting a suitable text. The author identifies the major review criteria and examines nine widely used books, grouping them by type of approach.     

我国渔业国际竞争力分析及提升策略研究

我国是世界渔业大国,水产品一直在我国农产品出口贸易中占有重要的地位。文章分析了我国水产品出口贸易的现状,并用国际市场占有率、显性比较优势指数和贸易竞争优势指数评价了我国水产品出口的竞争力,研究表明我国水产品出口贸易总体上具有一定比较优势,但我国的水产品贸易的国际化程度很低,且表现出比较优势不断下降的趋势。最后,针对影响我国水产品出口贸易的因素提出相应对策。     

Sequential Markets: An Experimental Investigation of Clower's Dual-Decision Hypothesis

Countless experimental studies have shown that markets converge quickly and efficiently to the competitive outcome under many trading institutions, particularly the double auction mechanism. This creates difficulties for Keynesian stories of unemployment creation—which suggest a noncompetitive outcome in an essentially competitive world. Such stories were popular in the late 1960s and 1970s. One of these stories—the dual decision hypothesis of Clower—was seen then as the beginning of a story of unemployment. This article reports the results of an experiment designed to test this hypothesis. Specifically, we set up an experiment in which there are two sequential double-auction markets, in the first of which one good (labour) is traded, after which the second market (goods) is opened and the second good traded. We compare the outcome of our experiment with that of the competitive theory. One general finding is that not enough trade takes place in the two markets. In other words, the usual finding that competitive equilibrium is achieved in double-auction markets is not replicated in this sequential setting. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

产品市场竞争战略与公司债务融资选择

本文遵循Wanzenried（2003）、Povel＆Raith（2004）、Campello（2006）等人的研究路径。结合现代资本结构理论最新成果。考虑了一个简单的二阶段双头垄断模型,运用非对称信息静态博弈原理,基于内生化债务合约分析、参与人信息分布结构及生产成本等影响的创新视角。构建了一个扩展的关于产业特征、产品市场竞争与公司融资选择互动的理论模型,分析结果支持了主流结论。     

Competitive balance in a quasi-double knockout tournament

In 2001, the All-Ireland Gaelic Football competition changed from being a singleknockout tournament to a quasi-double knockout competition. Similar natural experiments in economics and operational research theory suggest such a change should reduce the competitive balance in the competition. Using a Hirschmann–Herfindahl Index measure of concentration and a bootstrapping approach, we confirm that the new structure leads to a less competitive outcome and, importantly, this outcome is less uncertain. Our bootstrapped results show that in the long run, with larger samples, there is less competitive balance in the new competition structure than in the older structure competition structure. Finally, we also consider a stochastic dominance approach to evaluating the change in tournament structure, but the low power due to the presence of ties in our small sample leads to an inconclusive outcome.