Optimal auctions under collusion of buyers with discrete valuations

The potential seller of an indivisible good faces two potential buyers whose valuations for the good are private information. We derive the optimal selling mechanism under the assumption that the buyers collude both when the valuations are independently distributed and when they are correlated. We find that when the valuations are independent the seller can obtain the same expected revenue as if the buyers behaved noncooperatively; if instend the valuations are correlated then collusion harms the seller. In this latter case, moreover, each buyer’s information at the collusion stage about the other buyer’s valuation turns out to be very relevant for the effectiveness of collusion.     

Inefficiency of equilibria in digital mechanisms with continuous valuations

A digital mechanism is defined as an iterative procedure in which bidders select an action, from a finite set, in each iteration. When bidders have continuous valuations and make strategic reports, we show that any ex post implementation of the Vickrey choice rule via such a mechanism needs infinitely many iterations for almost all realizations of the bidders’ valuations. Thus, when valuations are drawn from a continuous probability distribution, the Vickrey choice rule can only be used at the expense of a running time that is infinite with probability one. This infeasibility result even holds in the case of two bidders and the Vickrey choice rule only being required to be established with probability one. Establishing the efficient allocation when the $n$ bidders’ report truthfully contrasts starkly to the previous setting: a bisection procedure has a finite running time almost always, and an expected number of reports are equal to $2n$. Using a Groves payment scheme rather than Vickrey’s second price payment scheme somewhat mitigates the problem. We provide an example mechanism with a Groves payment scheme, in which the running time of the mechanism in equilibrium is finite with probability $\frac{1}{2}$.     

Agglomeration economies with consistent productivity estimates

This paper investigates the relative impact of microeconomic agglomeration mechanisms on plant's total factor productivity (TFP) using German establishment and employment-level data. Contrasting different strategies for estimating TFP from plant-level production functions reveals that unobserved output prices bias true productivity and lead to underestimated agglomeration economies. With the corrected TFP measure, the largest impact is found for labor market pooling, which is captured by the correlation of the occupational composition between one county-industry and the rest of the county. This main result is robust, even when the spatial units are resized from counties to larger labor market regions. Input linkages appear to be relevant only at this larger regional scale. Overall, agglomeration economies differ substantially across industries. Only for a subset of industries, some positive evidence is detected for knowledge spillovers.     

北京超强家具公司的产品无缺陷管理

一、公司概况 北京超强家具公司是目前中国最大的综合性家具企业,现有员工3400人,下设19个制作分厂,7个家具专卖店(城),拥有十余条从德国、意大利、美国、英国、台湾引进的先进生产线,可生产实木、板式、金属、软体、玻璃五大类家具800多个品种.该公司现有总资产2.26亿元,固定资产原值1.5亿元.1997年,公司销售收入近8亿元,实现利税7000多万元.     

Management's reporting strategy and imperfection of the capital market

Since the decision on the reported outcome is delegated to the management of the firm, it is commonly held that when the capital market is imperfect the manager achieves consumption smoothing by smoothing the reports relative to the actual outcome. Modeling the firm as a principal-agent contract shows the contrary. When the capital market is imperfect the firm's reporting strategy is conservative, as the manager never reports more than the actual outcome because of fear of an unfavorable future outcome. When the capital market is perfect the firm either smooths the report-reports more than the actual outcome when the actual outcome is low and reports less than the actual outcome when the outcome is hig-or reports more than the actual outcome in order to take advantage of the sharing rule being an increasing function of the report.     

Market perception of sovereign credit risk in the euro area during the financial crisis

We study market perception of sovereign credit risk in the euro area during the financial crisis. In our analysis we use a parsimonious CDS pricing model to estimate the probability of default (PD) and the loss given default (LGD) as perceived by financial markets. In our empirical results the estimated LGDs perceived by financial markets stay comfortably below 40% in most of the samples. Global financial indicators are positively and strongly correlated with the market perception of sovereign credit risk; whilst macroeconomic and institutional developments were at best only weakly correlated with the market perception of sovereign credit risk.     

Situated valuations: Affordances of management technologies in organizations

This article engages with the affordance literature and identifies a need for a reorientation of its use in organization and management studies. Thus far, affordances has mainly been used as part of the program of sociomateriality to describe the technology–user dyad. Only to a lesser extent have studies using the affordance concept been sensitive to the means in which contextual conditions outside the technology-user dyad configure technological affordances. In order to provide such a sensitization, this article mobilizes the emerging field of valuation studies. It contributes to affordance literature with a synthesis of valuation studies and affordance theory and by constructing the concept of situated valuation as an associate concept to affordances. This article demonstrates the worth of this association by drawing on a comprehensive, ethnographic study of Lean management in a children’s hospital.     

On financial equilibrium with intermediation costs

This paper studies the set of competitive equilibria in financial economies with intermediation costs. We consider an arbitrary dividend structure, which includes options and equity with limited liabilities. We show a general existence result and upper-hemi continuity of the equilibrium correspondence. Finally, we prove that when intermediation costs approach zero, unbounded volume of asset trades is a necessary and sufficient condition, provided that, there is no financial equilibrium without intermediation costs.     

Promoting a free market by ending the Single Market – reforming EU financial regulation

The development of the Single Market in the EU – and the extension of its principles to the EEA – has led to dangerous trends in bank regulation as there is a ‘disconnect’ between regulation and deposit insurance systems. Although these problems do not exist in insurance markets to any great extent, Single Market regulation gives rise to other problems in that sector. In particular, it is restricting free trade both within and between countries. We propose a radical new model that would promote free trade without centralisation.     

A consistent model specification test with mixed discrete and continuous data

In this paper we propose a nonparametric kernel-based model specification test that can be used when the regression model contains both discrete and continuous regressors. We employ discrete variable kernel functions and we smooth both the discrete and continuous regressors using least squares cross-validation (CV) methods. The test statistic is shown to have an asymptotic normal null distribution. We also prove the validity of using the wild bootstrap method to approximate the null distribution of the test statistic, the bootstrap being our preferred method for obtaining the null distribution in practice. Simulations show that the proposed test has significant power advantages over conventional kernel tests which rely upon frequency-based nonparametric estimators that require sample splitting to handle the presence of discrete regressors.     

A two-sector model with target-return pricing in a stock-flow consistent framework

In this paper, we build a generalized two-sector Kaleckian growth model and explore the dynamics towards long-run positions. The model incorporates conflicting claims of labour and firms over income distribution and endogenous labour-saving technical progress. Adopting a stock-flow consistent framework, our simulation experiments yield the following results. First, the ‘paradox of thrift’ and the ‘paradox of costs’ hold, meaning that lower saving rates generate higher growth rates while higher real wages generate higher profit rates, but the magnitude of the impact depends on the initial status of income distribution and monetary policy. Second, changes in autonomous labour-saving innovations might explain the phenomenon of the ‘New Economy’ of the second half of the 1990s within an alternative framework. Our simulations with a two-sector model retrieve the analytical results achieved with a one-sector Kaleckian model, with the addition of path dependence.     

陷入财务困境企业的价值评估

陷入财务困境的企业价值的评估具有一定的特殊性,本文针对企业不同的经营状况,分别介绍了暂时处于财务困境的公司和陷于财务困境无力自拔的公司所分别适用的不同的价值评估的方法。     

Existence of financial equilibria with restricted participation

We consider a two-date model of a financial exchange economy with finitely many agents having nonordered preferences and portfolio constraints. There is a market for physical commodities at any state today or tomorrow and financial transfers across time and across states are allowed by means of finitely many nominal assets or numéraire assets. We prove a general existence result of equilibria for such a financial exchange economy in which portfolios are defined by linear constraints, extending the framework of linear equality constraints by Balasko et al. (1990), and the existence results in the unconstrained case by Cass (1984, 2006), Werner (1985), Duffie (1987), and Geanakoplos and Polemarchakis (1986). Our main result is a consequence of an auxiliary result, also of interest for itself, in which agents’ portfolio constraints are defined by general closed convex sets and the financial structure is assumed to satisfy a “nonredundancy-type” assumption, weaker than the ones in Radner (1972) and Siconolfi (1989).     

陷入财务困境企业的价值评估

陷入财务困境的企业价值的评估具有一定的特殊性,本文针对企业不同的经营状况,分别介绍了暂时处于财务困境的公司和陷于财务困境无力自拔的公司所分别适用的不同的价值评估的方法.     

Optimal portfolio choice and consistent performance

Consistent financial performance is the key element to success in asset management. We use a dynamic wealth constraint to represent the consistent performance requirement, which takes into account the entire historical records as a benchmark so that the wealth always stays at or above the benchmark. The optimal policy under this wealth constraint is characterized, and several implications are presented in this paper. This consistent performance constraint could be an appealing tool to be implemented in a volatile market and have rich practical implications.