Sen and Commons on Markets and Freedom

Amartya Sen's enlarged conception of freedom has augmented the scope of economic analysis but it also has had the surprising effect of being more supportive of the free market than conventional welfare economics. It is argued here that a comparison of Sen's position with that of the American institutionalist, J R Commons, highlights some problems with Sen's approach and points to possible ways in which they might be addressed.     

Markets and jungles

Economic institutions determine prospects for growth and development. This paper examines necessary conditions for an economy to support institutions that implement markets. Agents differ in land holdings, skill, and power. A competitive market assigns land to the skilled, not necessarily to the powerful. Therefore a market?allocation needs to be robust to coalitional expropriation. In a dynamic setting, market payoffs may induce sufficient inequality in next period??s endowments for markets to alternate with expropriation in a limit cycle, decreasing efficiency and amplifying macroeconomic fluctuations. Long run stability of markets is favored by higher social mobility, more initial equality, and less mismatch between skill and land.     

征信市场国际比较与研究

文章从研究我国征信市场现状入手,通过国际比较分析．提出发展征信业务的模式,重点是要建立和健全社会信用体系,加快建设和完善企业和个人征信系统,建立有效的信用激励和失信惩戒制度。强化全社会信用意识和诚信行为,营造诚实守信、公平竞争的市场环境。规范发展行业协会和市场中介组织。     

Financial Markets and Wages

We study a labour market equilibrium model in which firms sign optimal long-term contracts with workers. Firms that are financially constrained offer an increasing wage profile: they pay lower wages today in exchange for higher future wages once they become unconstrained. Because constrained firms grow faster, the model predicts a positive correlation between the growth of wages and the growth of the firm. Under some conditions, the model also generates a positive relation between firm size and wages. Using matched employer–employee data from Finland and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth for the U.S., we show that the key dynamic properties of the model are supported by the data.     

Macroeconomics and Credit Markets

The extent to which freedom should prevail continues to be a lingering question in the economic discipline. The article focuses on how freedom is conceptualized. The question addressed is whose freedoms are being served through economic self-governance. The profit seeking microeconomic objective of capitalists, as addressed by Karl Marx, must lead to structural change resulting in unemployment. But unemployment has disastrous social costs. So the promotion of freedom for capitalists comes at a high cost toward society. Thus it is argued that the concept of freedom is itself a paradox. Freedom itself must be constrained to be viable.     

Taxation and Labor Markets

We exploit the common features of models such as union, search and efficiency wage models to develop a framework that can be used to analyze the effects of any revenue-neutral tax reform on employment. In particular, we show that taxes paid by workers are not equivalent to taxes paid by firms when taxes are non linear. Moreover, we show that the positive impact of tax progressivity on employment is attributable only to a limited set of hypotheses. Received May 2, 2001; revised version received November 27, 2001 Published online: December 5, 2002     

Privatizing Monopolies in Developing Countries: The Real Effects of Exclusivity Periods in Telecommunications

Many developing countries have given newly privatized incumbent network utilities, especially telecommunications, exclusive rights to serve particular markets. Research to date has explored privatization, competition, and to a lesser extent, regulation. We know little, however, about the effects of the privatization transactions themselves and, in particular, how these exclusivity periods matter. I use original data to investigate this approach to privatization. I find that exclusivity periods are associated with significant increases in the firms sale price. Exclusivity periods are also, however, correlated with a significant decrease in the incumbents investment in the telecommunications network, payphones, mobile telephone penetration, and international calling.JEL Classification: L1, L5, L96, O12I am grateful for the thoughtful comments and suggestions of Luke Haggarty, Tom Hazlett, Phil Keefer, Roger Noll, Russ Pittman, Greg Rosston, David Sappington, Mary Shirley, Lixin Colin Xu, and two anonymous referees. I thank Troy Kravitz for research assistance. I am solely responsible for all mistakes.     

Financial Markets and Stochastic Growth

The authors study the effect of financial markets on the investment of a two-good two-country economy with stochastic production in a dynamic framework. Each country produces and invests only one good and, therefore, makes decisions as a central planner in an optimal growth model. Trade between consumers of both countries, however, takes place on competitive (spot or financial) markets. The authors compare the investment–consumption decisions of both "market" models with the benchmark case of an integrated world-equilibrium. In the log-linear case, it is possible to uniquely characterize the state-dependent preferences of consumers that lead to dynamically efficient investment decisions. It is shown that the investment decisions in both "market" models are, in general, inefficient compared with the efficient, or integrated world economy, case.     

北美纺织市场调查和研究

自１９９９年起，我受中国华源集团委派，长驻美国和墨西哥，担任美国UNISUNINTERNATIONALINC．总经理和墨西哥SINATEXS．A．DEC．V．总经理。SINATEX是建在墨西哥的一个十万锭棉纺厂，总投资９６００万美元，是我国纺织行业最大的海外企业。２００１年５月２８日公司举行了隆     

Export-Flexible Firms and Forward Markets

This paper examines the production and hedging decisions of an exporting firm under exchange rate uncertainty. The firm is export flexible in that it can distribute its output to either the domestic market or a foreign market, after observing the realized spot exchange rate. The firm is a monopoly in the domestic market but a price-taker in the foreign market. It is shown that the separation theorem holds if selling exclusively in the domestic market is suboptimal even under the most unfavorable sport exchange rate. Otherwise, the firm's optimal output depends on its preference and on the underlying exchange rate uncertainty. Furthermore, the export-flexible firm underhedges its exchange rate risk exposure in a currency forward market wherein the forward exchange rate contains a non-positive risk premium. [D21, F31]     

接管市场与公司治理

本文以公司治理机制为基本分析框架,在充分借鉴国内外研究成果的基础上首先分析了接管市场作为公司治理中的外部治理机制,对公司治理发生作用的方式和途径,然后对我国上市公司中的部分兼并收购活动对公司治理的作用效果进行了统计分析,并运用假设检验方法,剖析了影响我国上市公司接管市场治理效果的因素,最后据此提出了政策建议。     

Imperfect Forward Markets and Hedging

This paper considers a hedging model of a risk-averse competitive firm facing output price uncertainty. Imperfections exist in forward transactions in that the firm faces a downward-sloping demand function for its forward sales. We show that the optimal output and hedge ratio of the firm are, in general, not separable, and are related in a deterministic manner. We also derive some economic implications of production and hedging decisions when firms differ in their attitudes towards risk. A more risk-averse firm is shown to produce less and hedge more than a less risk-averse firm.
(J.E.L.: D21, D81).     

The Male-Female Pay Gap Driven by Coupling between Labor Markets and Mating Markets

Synopsis Males often get paid more than females for the same work. This male-female pay gap has been observed throughout the world over many years. The most commonly cited explanations focus on gender oppression and workplace discrimination. We agree that discrimination contributes significantly to the pay gap; however, other factors may play important roles in how the sexes compete in the labor market. We use observations from psychology and concepts from biology to show how aspects of mate choice may influence labor markets. With a mathematical model, we analyze how mating preferences for partner wages affect the differences in wages between males and females, and in turn how wage differences affect mating preferences. If some extrinsic force, such as discrimination, creates an initial bias in wages, then coupled feedback between mating preferences and wages creates and maintains excess mating preference and wage biases. This model demonstrates how coupling between labor markets and mating markets can lead to outcomes that do not occur when analyzing either market in isolation from the other.     

Asset Markets and Endogenous Liquidity

In financial markets characterized by imperfect depth, speculative trading will have transitory effects on the market price as market makers must be compensated for the risk of holding the asset. The number of people providing liquidity to a market will generally be endogenously determined by the quantity of liquidity demanded. This paper looks for evidence of endogenous liquidity provision in several international stock and bond markets. Evidence shows strong support for these speculative dynamics in the stock markets. The evidence for these dynamics is less striking with fixed‐income prices, consistent with the less speculative nature of these markets.     

Missing Markets and Redundant Reservoirs

This paper uses a two-sector, two-period,spatial model of groundwater usage withstochastic surface water supply to illustratethe potential for the suboptimal management ofthe timing of groundwater uses. A ``timeprofile externality' is said to exist when thetiming of groundwater extraction by one set ofusers impacts on the time profile of wateravailability to another set of users. Theexistence of the time of use externalitydepends on the presence of importantdifferences in the preferences between thecontrol and non-control sectors. It alsodepends on the absence of the markets thatwould internalise these differences. Oneimportant implication of the existence of suchexternalities is that they can inducesub-optimal insurance investments in the formof water storage capital, i.e., unnecessarysurface water reservoirs.     

经理人市场:契约问题与治理路径

在界定职业经理人内涵的基础上,本文分析了经理人市场交易关系的契约特征。由于经理人市场行为风险、跨时期交易和不完全契约问题的存在,本文从激励相容契约、声誉机制和内部劳动力市场角度分析了缓解契约难题的治理途径,并结合中国实际探讨国有企业"激励悖论"和民营企业管理困境的原因。