有限理性与自我主体意识

经济学界至今还没有对有限理性的成因找到一个公认的正确答案.通过实验,本文证明了经济主体的有限理性不是由于人脑计算能力的约束,也不是由于道德或社会规范的约束,而是因为受到其不愿尊重客体的自我主体意识的影响.本文还证实,自我主体意识是禀赋效应、现状偏爱现象、沉没成本谬误、占便宜悖论、Ellsberg悖论和分离效应等异常现象产生的真正原因.     

The consequences of an unknown debt target

Several proposals to reduce U.S. debt reveal large differences in their targets. We examine how an unknown debt target affects economic activity using a real business cycle model in which Bayesian households learn about a state-dependent debt target in an endogenous tax rule. Recent papers use stochastic volatility shocks to study fiscal uncertainty. In our setup, the fiscal rule is time-varying due to unknown changes in the debt target. Households infer the current debt target from a noisy tax rule and jointly estimate the transition probabilities. Three key findings emerge from our analysis: (1) limited information about the debt target amplifies the effect of tax shocks through changes in expected tax rates; (2) the welfare losses are an order of magnitude larger when both the debt target state and transition matrix are unknown than when only the debt target state is unknown to households; (3) an unknown debt target likely reduced the stimulative effect of the ARRA and uncertainty about the sunset provision in the Bush tax cuts may have slowed the recovery and led to welfare losses.     

Task scheduling and moral hazard

We study a two-period moral hazard problem with risk-neutral and wealth-constrained agents and three identical tasks. We show that the allocation of tasks over time is important if there is a capacity constraint on the number of tasks that can be performed in one period. We characterize the optimal schedule of tasks over time and the optimal assignment of tasks to agents conditional on the outcomes of previous tasks. In particular, we show that delaying tasks is optimal if and only if the effect of an agent’s effort on the probability of success is relatively low. We have benefitted from helpful discussions with A. Roider, L. Samuelson, and U. Schweizer. The paper has been substantially improved due to the detailed and very valuable comments of an Associate Editor. Financial support by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, SFB/TR15, is gratefully acknowledged.     

Green auctions: A biodiversity study of mechanism design with externalities

This paper uses a mechanism design approach to study the biodiversity improvement in a territory, where the government is the principal and the landholders are the agents. In particular, I analyze an optimal mechanism that considers multidimensional bid which includes both the biodiversity improvement of the project and its cost. Additionally, this mechanism incorporates the externality (either positive or negative) that a biodiversity project causes in the surrounding agents who decided not to participate. Specifically, I assume that externalities enter in the cost function of the nonparticipating landholders. I show that, in the case of negative externalities, the government will implement a transfer function which is decreasing in the landholder's efficiency level. On the other hand, in the case of a positive externality, paradoxically the government may be interested in the nonparticipation of the most efficient landholders.     

所得、快乐与赋税:基于黄有光快乐经济学的审视

根据黄有光的快乐经济学,人们追求的最终目的是提高福利,因而经济学探讨的中心问题是福利或快乐.由于快乐是一种主观感受,因而GDP并不是衡量福利的一个有效指标.在现代社会中,生活品质不仅与私人品的消费有关,更与公共品的质量和数量有关.因此,在未来社会中,公共开支确实会且应该不断增长.为了应对不断增加的公共支出,政府就需要提高累进税,尤其是提高钻石商品的税收.     

Designing an optimal contest

The paper brings a mechanism design perspective to the study of contests. We consider the problem of selecting a contest success function when the contest designer may also value the prize. We show that any equilibrium outcome that can be achieved by a concave increasing contest success function can be replicated by a linear contest success function. An expected utility maximizing designer should employ a linear homogeneous contest success function. We explicitly derive the optimal contest for a risk-neutral designer and present comparative statics results. Tullock's contest is optimal only when the designer's valuation for the prize is low.     

绿色GDP:急需核算的梦

在过去二十多年．我国保持了高速的经济增长，同时也面临着严峻的能源和环境问题。本文通过对我国经济增长代价的分析，提出用“绿色GDP”来重新审视我国的经济增长。     

Computationally-feasible truthful auctions for convex bundles

In many economic settings, like spectrum and real-estate auctions, geometric figures on the plane are for sale. Each bidder bids for his desired figure, and the auctioneer has to choose a set of disjoint figures that maximizes the social welfare. In this work, we design mechanisms that are both incentive compatible and computationally feasible for these environments. Since the underlying algorithmic problem is computationally hard, these mechanisms cannot always achieve the optimal welfare; Nevertheless, they do guarantee a fraction of the optimal solution. We differentiate between two information models—when both the desired figures and their values are unknown to the auctioneer or when only the agents' values are private data. We guarantee different fractions of the optimal welfare for each information model and for different families of figures (e.g., arbitrary convex figures or axis-aligned rectangles). We suggest using a measure on the geometric diversity of the figures for expressing the quality of the approximations that our mechanisms provide.     

Weak monotonicity and Bayes–Nash incentive compatibility

An allocation rule is called Bayes–Nash incentive compatible, if there exists a payment rule, such that truthful reports of agents' types form a Bayes–Nash equilibrium in the direct revelation mechanism consisting of the allocation rule and the payment rule. This paper provides a characterization of Bayes–Nash incentive compatible allocation rules in social choice settings where agents have multi-dimensional types, quasi-linear utility functions and interdependent valuations. The characterization is derived by constructing complete directed graphs on agents' type spaces with cost of manipulation as lengths of edges. Weak monotonicity of the allocation rule corresponds to the condition that all 2-cycles in these graphs have non-negative length. For the case that type spaces are convex and the valuation for each outcome is a linear function in the agent's type, we show that weak monotonicity of the allocation rule together with an integrability condition is a necessary and sufficient condition for Bayes–Nash incentive compatibility.     

A note on budget balance under interim participation constraints: the case of independent types

We provide a simple proof of the equivalence between ex ante and ex post budget balance constraints in Bayesian mechanism design with independent types when participation decisions are made at the interim stage. The result is given an interpretation in terms of efficient allocation of risk.     

Incentives for budget discipline in the presence of elections

This paper presents a mechanism to mitigate the adverse consequences of the political budget cycle on social welfare. We use a simplified two-period version of Rogoff's [Rogoff, K., 1990. Equilibrium political budget cycles. American Economic Review 80, 21–36.] rational budget cycle model to address the normative issue of reducing the budget deficit in pre-electoral periods. A regulation consisting of a sanction scheme contingent on fiscal policy joint with a fixed transfer is shown to provide the appropriate incentives for budget discipline in the presence of elections.     

2000年以后福利国家养老金体系发展趋势考察——基于“去商品化”的分析框架

文章根据"去商品化"的分析框架,对2000年以后三种福利模式国家的养老金体系发展趋势进行了考察。研究发现,社会民主主义福利模式国家的养老金体系表现出去商品化的趋势,体现了社会民主主义福利模式对社会权利及普惠主义思想的回归;自由主义福利模式国家的养老金体系呈现出继续商品化的趋势,是对1990～2000年间再商品化趋势的继续和发展,体现了自由主义福利模式对市场作用的信奉;保守主义福利模式国家的养老金体系同样表现出一定的商品化趋势,但这是各个社会群体博弈后,选择商品化手段对养老金体系进行调整的过程。     

The artist–art dealer relationship as a marketing channel

This article studies the relationship between the artist and the art dealer, interpreted as being the two members of a “marketing channel”, as defined by industrial organization and marketing science literature. The result for both parties depends on the individual effort that each of them puts in; uncoordinated effort levels are shown to result in an inefficient outcome. Efficiency, subject to different institutional settings and agreements, is studied here with specific reference to the visual arts. The results may easily apply to the stage of creation of a number of different artistic goods. Possible ways to reach efficient outcomes in marketing channels in artistic fields are suggested and discussed.     

政绩考核与政府官员激励——一个机制设计的观点

我国是实行分权治理的国家,地方政府除了承担中央政府授予的计划生育、教育文化和社会稳定职能外,还被授予极大的经济管理权限。分权在中央与地方之间产生了委托代理关系,由于中央政府与地方政府之间目标的不一致以及信息不对称,中央政府要设计激励机制来规范地方政府官员的行为。本文从机制设计的角度,一方面考察了当政绩考核为单一的经济增长指标时,中央政府所采取的激励机制的结果;另一方面,分析了当政绩考核由单一的增长指标变为综合性指标,并且其中一些指标不易准确测量时,政府官员行为的激励扭曲。基于此,得出了地方政府官员激励机制设计的一些原则。     

Efficient compromising

Two agents must select one of three alternatives. Their ordinal rankings are commonly known and diametrically opposed. Efficiency requires choosing the alternative the agents rank second whenever the weighted sum of their von Neumann Morgenstern utilities is higher than under either agent's favorite alternative. The agents' utilities of the middle-ranked alternative are i.i.d., privately observed random variables. In our setup, which is closely related to a public goods problem where agents face liquidity constraints but no participation constraints, decision rules that truthfully elicit utilities and implement efficient decisions do not exist. We provide analytical and numerical results on second-best rules.     

Costly state verification and debt contracts: a critical resume

This paper presents a critical review of the Costly State Verification framework starting from the basic model by Gale and Hellwig [Review of Economic Studies 52 (1985) 647] and further examining the most recent developments. It aims both at discussing the optimality of debt contract in alternative contexts and at offering a reply to the critiques usually moved to this approach within a unified framework.