Pigouvian Taxes Under Imperfect Competition If Consumption Depends on Emissions

The paper considers environmental regulation of a consumption good and an externality which influence demand and costs in a nonseparable way. Under monopoly two instruments are always required for first-best. The Pigouvian tax is more complicated than anticipated.     

Ambiguous Social Welfare Effects of Price Regulation Under Imperfect Competition

Conventional wisdom is that a binding price ceiling increases output and so increases social welfare if imposed on an imperfectly competitive market. However, this paper shows that a price ceiling can be harmful to social welfare even though it increases industry output and consumer surplus. This model can be applied to the pharmaceutical industry under price control in many countries, e.g., U.K., Canada, Germany and Japan.     

不完全竞争、非对称信息下的最优进口贸易政策和产业政策

本文讨论了不完全竞争和非对称信息情况下 ,如何运用进口贸易政策和产业政策增进本国福利的问题。本文发现 ,(1 )在Cournot同质产品竞争的情况下 ,制定可以诱使本国企业显示真实成本的政策规则可以实现与完全信息情况相同的配置结果 ;并且 ,本国企业的生产成本越低 ,政策规则规定的最优关税越低 ;在某些成本结构下 ,甚至应该执行零关税政策。 (2 )在圆形城市空间竞争 (SpatialCompetitioninCircularCity)的情况下 ,生产补贴和关税的作用完全等价 ;不存在可以实现事后效率的政策规则 ,并且 ,约束最优结果不是一个PBE均衡结果 ,本国政府的最优政策是制定等于单位运输成本的关税。上述结论蕴含 ,最优政策干预以及它能否消除非对称信息可能带来的效率损失依赖于竞争类型 ,而不依赖于信息结构 ,因此 ,它不会发生扭曲     

Commercial Policy Towards Multinational Corporations Under Imperfect Information*

This paper examines host country government (HCG) commercial policy towards imports resulting from intrafirm trade conducted by a multinational corporation (MNC). the effectiveness of the HCG's commercial policy is impaired by its limited information about the MNC's cost of production. the commercial policy consists of restrictions on intrafirm transactions. We construct and characterize the optimal commercial policy under imperfect information and find that under imperfect information the optimal policy entails a distorted transfer price and a lower level of intrafirm trade relative to the full information case. Welfare implications of commercial policy under imperfect information are also examined.     

Imperfect Information and Opportunism

Information is a scarce resource. It is inherently available only in a limited form to decision-makers. Limited or imperfect information is caused by uncertainty — both ontologic and epistemic, limitations in cognitive capabilities or bounded rationality, hidden information, and information asymmetries. This has fundamental implications for the manner in which the self-interested behavior of agents will manifest itself. The article argues that in the context of imperfect information, self-interest can function in a manner quite different from what standard approaches assume. This has been demonstrated by the recent financial crisis. However, there has been limited consideration in mainstream models, both of the neoclassical and institutional type, as to what the exact nature of self-interestedness is, and how this affects the market behavior of agents. The nature of self-interest, therefore, needs to be modeled explicitly to improve the explanatory power of economic theories.     

Imperfect Competition and Growth with Entrepreneurial Risk

Abstract. This paper analyzes an overlapping generations endogenous growth model of occupational choice under risk in a two-sector economy with intermediate and final goods. Agents choose between business ownership in the monopolistically competitive intermediate goods industry or employment as a worker in this sector. Firm-specific profits are stochastic. Occupational choice under risk endogenizes the number of firms and products in the intermediate goods industry. The analysis shows that economic performance and growth both depend on the entrepreneurship rate and are inefficiently low compared with an economy with perfect markets for pooling risks. Monopolistic competition partly offsets the negative income effects from a too low level of entrepreneurial risk-taking.     

Search, Bargaining, Money, and Prices Under Private Information

This paper presents a model of money and search where bargaining determines prices and the quality of goods is private information. It studies how a lemons problem affects the purchasing power of money. There are multiple, Pareto-ranked equilibria. The superior equilibrium, where no lemons are produced, exists even if information about quality is relatively scarce. In other equilibria, there is price dispersion, and uninformed buyers pay higher prices than informed buyers for all goods. Taxing money balances (a proxy for inflation) makes buyers less selective, thus reducing the average quality of supply and the premium paid for known quality.     

Two-Part Trade Policy under Imperfect Competition

In this paper we consider the potential gain of a government pursuing a two-part trade policy: an import license for entry, along with a per-unit tariff on imports. The model is a two-stage game of complete but imperfect information. In the first stage, the domestic government sets trade policy, while in the second stage the home and foreign producers behave as Cournot competitors. The paper demonstrates that the optimal trade policy depends upon the number of firms, the degree of heterogeneity in cost functions, and the degree of convexity in cost functions.     

Voluntary Export Restraints under Imperfect Competition

The paper studies the effects of a change in the level of voluntary export restraints (VERs) on the behavior of the domestic firm and on the welfare of the importing country. The author constructs a simple two‐country Cournot duopoly model in which each firm produces a homogeneous good at constant marginal cost. It is shown that the results obtained by predecessors based on linear demand, constant‐elasticity demand, strategic substitutes and so forth all emerge as special cases.     

Imperfect Competition, Capital Shortages and Unemployment Persistence

We construct a model integrating the traditions of imperfect competition macroeconomics and real business cycles. For this we study a dynamic economy with optimizing households, firms and trade unions subject to stochastic shocks. We can derive closed form solutions for the behaviour of all agents. It is found that the combination of capital shortages and imperfect competition in labor markets can give rise to unemployment, and that this unemployment is quite persistent, even when the underlying shocks are not.     

On the Double Dividend under Imperfect Competition

We investigate whether, and under which conditions, a revenue-neutral environmental tax reform may yield an employment double dividend, i.e., an improvement of environmental quality and an increase in aggregate employment. Using a model with two market imperfections – a rigid real wage and imperfect competition in one industry – we show that an employment dividend is plausibly obtained. However, for countries where labor taxes are high and households spend a large share of their income in favor of environmentally harmful consumption goods a double dividend can nevertheless not be obtained, for under these conditions environmental quality deteriorates.     

Permit Trading and Credit Trading: A Comparison of Cap-Based and Rate-Based Emissions Trading Under Perfect and Imperfect Competition

This paper compares emissions trading based on a cap on total emissions (permit trading) and on relative standards per unit of output (credit trading). Two types of market structure are considered: perfect competition and Cournot oligopoly. We find that output, abatement costs and the number of firms are higher under credit trading. Allowing trade between permit-trading and credit-trading sectors may increase welfare. With perfect competition, permit trading always leads to higher welfare than credit trading. With imperfect competition, credit trading may outperform permit trading. Environmental policy can lead to exit, but also to entry of firms. Entry and exit have a profound impact on the performance of the schemes, especially under imperfect competition. We find that it may be impossible to implement certain levels of total industry emissions. Under credit trading several levels of the relative standard can achieve the same total level of emissions.     

Privatization in a Small Open Economy with Imperfect Competition

We look at privatization in a general equilibrium model of a small, tariff‐distorted, open economy. There is a differentiated good produced by both private and public sector enterprises. A reduction in government production in order to cut losses from such production raises the returns to capital and increases the tariff revenue, which are welfare‐improving. However, privatization also leads to lower wages and possibly fewer private brands. This lowers workers’ welfare, which may make privatization politically infeasible. Privatization can improve workers’ welfare with complementary reforms, e.g., attracting foreign investment or trade liberalization.     

Prices and Outputs Under Cable TV Reregulation

Cable television reregulation in October 1992 did succeed in constraining subscriber bills about 9% below trend by October 1994. Yet, the growth rate of basic cable television subscribership fell sharply during the period of rate reductions. Only when real rates began rising in the period following October 1994—after an explicit relaxation of controls—did reliable industry output measures return to the pre-regulation growth trend. These data suggest that rate regulation becomes substantially less viable as the complexity of the regulated good increases.     

Modelling Policy Issues in a World of Imperfect Competition

General equilibrium theory constitutes a sound basis for the discussion of policy issues if firms do not have market power. However, if firms influence prices strategically, the concept of profits loses its meaning due to the price normalization problem. Hence, it is unclear how to model the behavior of oligopolistic firms. In order to provide a conceptual foundation for the analysis of policy issues in the case of imperfect competition, we discuss ways to formulate the objective of a strategic firm. In particular, we investigate the concept of real wealth maximization that is based on profits as well as on shareholders' aggregate demand.     

Dynamic Gains from International Trade with Imperfect Competition and Market Power

This paper revisits the gains from trade under imperfect competition by explicitly modeling strategic competition and entry. The papers highlights a welfare cost of imperfect competition, due to inefficiently high entry. Through increasing competition, international trade lowers price–cost markups and reduces excessive entry. This adds on a competitive channel for gains from trade to the well-known product diversity channel from previous literature. Both channels will increase the return to investment and raise the steady-state capital stock. An alternative case is possible, however, where there is inefficiently low entry. In that case, trade tends to be anticompetitive, raising price–cost markups and encouraging increased entry.     

Some Implications of Imperfect Competition For Recent Trade Theory*

This paper argues that in a general-equilibrium context, it is not sensible for oligopolistic (and mono-polistically competitive) firms to maximize profit, because the outcome would be sensitive to the choice of the numeraire. the natural objective of these firms would be to maximize the utility of the shareholders if the shareholders are identical. I show that even if each firm takes the representative individual's marginal utility of income as given, the outcome of the utility maximization objective is Pareto optimal, and in equilibrium, each firm equates price with marginal cost.     

不完全竞争条件下代建单位名录的声誉效应研究

本文将声誉效应引入代建单位名录的管理中,分析在代建单位声誉的构成及声誉测量条件下的代建单位名录动态管理的制度设计.研究结果以期能指导各地区代建单位名录的建立和管理,最终实现对代建人的有效激励.     

R&D, Imperfect Competition and Growth with Human Capital Accumulation

This paper studies the long‐run consequences of imperfect competition on growth and the sectoral distribution of skills within an R&D‐based growth model with human capital accumulation. We find that steady‐state growth is driven only by incentives to accumulate skills. In the model imperfect competition has a positive growth effect, while influencing the allocation of human capital to the different economic activities employing this factor input. Contrary to general wisdom, the share of resources invested in R&D turns out not to be monotonically increasing in the product market power and its correlation with the equilibrium output growth rate is not unambiguous.