Repeated Protection for Sale

This paper addresses whether the efficient equilibria characterized by Grossman and Helpman's one‐shot protection‐for‐sale game are renegotiation‐proof in an infinitely repeated setting. We propose a simple strategy profile that can support the efficient, truthful equilibrium in each period as a strongly renegotiation‐proof subgame perfect equilibrium. This result provides another plausible reason to explain why the truthful equilibrium may be focal in the game of protection‐for‐sale. In addition, when the timing of the contributions is specified explicitly, the special interest groups should minimize the upfront payment to the government before policy implementation to reduce the possibility of the collapse of such relational contracts.     

Linear Inequality Methods to Enforce Partnerships under Uncertainty: An Overview

We review different (generic) conditions on stochastic outcome functions to enforce either efficient or nearly efficient partnerships. Their logical relationship is explored. Two kinds of conditions are considered. However, the property for an action profile to be “compatible” plays a crucial role in both kinds. Also, two kinds of enforcement mechanisms are considered: enforcement through utility transfers and enforcement through repetition.Journal of Economic LiteratureClassification Numbers: D2, D7.     

Voluntarily Separable Repeated Prisoner's Dilemma

Ordinary repeated games do not apply to real societies where one can cheat and escape from partners. We formulate a model of endogenous relationships that a player can unilaterally end and start with a randomly assigned new partner with no information flow. Focusing on two-person, two-action Prisoner's Dilemma, we show that the endogenous duration of partnerships generates a significantly different evolutionary stability structure from ordinary random matching games. Monomorphic equilibria require initial trust building, while a polymorphic equilibrium includes earlier cooperators than any strategy in monomorphic equilibria and is thus more efficient. This is due to the non-linearity of average payoffs.     

Social norms and trust among strangers

We study the development of a social norm of trust and reciprocity among a group of strangers via the “contagious strategy” as defined in Kandori (1992). Over an infinite horizon, the players anonymously and randomly meet each other and play a binary trust game. In order to provide the investors with proper incentives to follow the contagious strategy, there is a sufficient condition that requires that there exists an outside option for the investors. Moreover, the investorsʼ payoff from the outside option must converge to the payoff from trust and reciprocity as the group size goes to infinity. We show that this sufficient condition is also a necessary condition to sustain any sequential equilibrium in which the trustees adopt the contagious strategy. Our results imply that a contagious equilibrium only supports trust if trust contributes almost nothing to the investorsʼ payoffs.     

Marriage, Divorce and Reciprocity-based Cooperation

This paper considers partnership formation, partnership dissolution and reciprocity‐based cooperation by couples in the form of voluntary transfers to smooth consumption. While risk sharing is one benefit of having a partner, it is also limited by the (endogenous) risk of separation. The equilibrium formation and dissolution of partnerships are determined simultaneously with cooperative behavior. Publicly provided earnings insurance is shown to increase the “turnover” rate in the marriage market as well as to reduce the steady‐state marriage rate and the implicit financial cooperation between partners.     

Polanyi and Post-neoliberalism in the Global South: Dilemmas of Re-embedding the Economy

Although Karl Polanyi Studied a different epoch and focused on Europe, his ideas have inspired an outpouring of studies on contemporary problems and prospects in the neoliberal era. The bulk of these studies pertain to industrial countries or global economic issues. However, the human, environmental and financial impact of market deregulation is arguably more devastating in the ‘developing’ countries than in the core. A question thus arises: do Polanyi's reflections on progressive alternatives to liberalism clarify contemporary debates on development alternatives in the Global South? I contend that democratic socialism – Polanyi's preferred remedy to the ‘demolition’ of society and nature occasioned by market civilisation – is problematical in light of what we have learned from the twentieth century, but his framework for evaluating alternatives – featuring the re-embedding of economy in society – remains as powerful as ever, I support this argument with an exploration of socialism and social democracy – as well as community – based alternatives arising from ‘reciprocity’. Each possibility raises distinctive dilemmas, as an analysis of cases reveals.     

Encouraging skill development: Evidence from public-private partnerships in education in Russia’s regions

How and when are governments able to encourage firms and schools to work together to develop workers’ skills? Upgrading the quality of human capital in the workforce is widely seen as a key challenge faced by countries looking to escape the “middle income trap.” Growing attention has been paid to public-private partnerships (PPP) between individual firms and schools as a powerful tool for meeting this challenge, but key facilitators of PPP thought crucial in existing studies – strong, independent employers’ associations and labor unions – are often missing in such settings. To explore the emergence of PPP in skill development in the developing world, we draw on recent reform experiences in Russia’s regions that have led to a surge in complex, costly forms of PPP despite weakly developed business associations and unions. We argue that variation in the administrative capacity of regional governments and their political accountability explains this surge. Strong administrative capacity reassures all parties that regional authorities can monitor their counterparties’ compliance with agreements, while political accountability creates incentives for authorities to do so. We test our argument using original data on the existence and content of firm-school partnerships across all Russia’s regions for 2013.     

Trust and reciprocity: extensions and robustness of triadic design

Our paper reconsiders the triadic design proposed by Cox (Games and Economic Behavior 46:260–281, 2004) to identify trust and reciprocity in investment games. Specifically, we extend the design in two directions. First, we collect information on investors’ choices by using both the direct-response (as does Cox) and strategy methods. Using the latter, we are able to condition reciprocity on initial inequality, which is endogenous when investigating reciprocity. We demonstrate that the triadic design provides evidence for reciprocity once that initial inequality is considered. Second, we elicit expectations and test their coherence with the triadic outcomes. By examining the relationship between trust actions and expected gains, we analyze whether investors’ expectations are consistent with their behavior. Finally, we test for the existence of an emotional bias, i.e., whether expectation mismatches induce trustees to change actual choices from the planned ones.     

An empirical study of collaborative partnering among enterprises and government organizations for information system outsourcing

Most researches on information systems (IS) outsourcing indicate that public sector decides to outsource information technology (IT) services due to the belief that private vendors offer more cost advantages. This research explores government sectors of outsourcing and focus on the role of relationship for IS-service providers. Quantitative data of 126 questionnaires and 30 IS demonstrate that trust, mutual dependence, equipment investment and information sharing are contributing factors to successful outsourcing long-term partnerships. Information sharing between the service receiver and provider is also vital in terms of equipment investment in long-term partnerships, and is affected by the level of trust that each party holds for the other within the outsourcing process. Conceptual model is useful in explicating important government-business partnering strategies – the model highlights not only the economic benefits that the IS-outsourcing relationship brings based on social exchange theory characteristics, but also suggests many additional relevant elements.     

Learning from Role Models in Rwanda: Incoherent Emulation in the Construction of a Neoliberal Developmental State

In the twenty-first century, developing country policymakers are offered different market-led role models and varied interpretations of ‘developmental state role models’. Despite this confusion, African countries pursue emulative strategies for different purposes – whether they may be for economic transformation (in line with developmental state strategies), market-led reforms or simply to signal the implementation of ‘best practices’ to please donors. Rwanda has been lauded for the country’s economic recovery since the 1994 genocide, with international financial institutions and heterodox scholars both praising different facets of its development strategy. This paper argues that Rwanda is an example of a country that has simultaneously pursued emulative strategies for different purposes – often even within the same sector. Two studies of emulation are explored: the emulation of Singapore’s Economic Development Board through the establishment of Rwanda’s own Rwanda Development Board (RDB) and the evolution of Rwanda’s financial sector with reference to the use of contending market-led and developmental state models. The paper argues that in Rwanda, incoherent emulation for different purposes has resulted in contradictory tensions within its development strategy and the construction of a neoliberal developmental state.     

Exploring Dissuasion as a (Geo)Political Instrument in Irregular Migration Control at the Southern Spanish Maritime Border

This article analyses the evolution and implementation of Spanish policy to control irregular immigration via maritime routes over the past two decades. Starting from the premise that this policy was based on a comprehensive strategy of dissuasion to prevent, contain and hinder the arrival and settlement of irregular immigrants, for analytical purposes the article introduces the concepts of preventive dissuasion, coercive dissuasion and repressive dissuasion to describe actions of diverse categories, hierarchy and scope that sequentially and simultaneously shape and structure the logic behind dissuasion used in different “territorial settings”. Spain has deployed a great deal of this policy – mainly preventive and coercive dissuasion strategies – through bilateral agreements and formal practices with African countries. This article is based on fieldwork carried out between 2008 and 2012 in different Spanish border areas, including interviews with different actors and visits to border posts and surveillance installations.     

The Design and Performance of Sharing Rules for a Partnership in Continuous Time

We study repeated partnerships with imperfect monitoring and risk neutrality. The interval between the partners' decisions, the delay, is given but can be arbitrarily small. Each stage-game's output is Gaussian, with mean and variance depending on the partners' actions, making the sequence of outcomes a discretization of a diffusion. A sharing rule is efficient if there is an equilibrium of the corresponding game whose outcomes are Pareto efficient; it is stable if these equilibria approach a limit as the delay approaches zero. We characterize partnerships for which there exist stable, efficient sharing rules, and describe the corresponding equilibria.Journal of Economic LiteratureClassification Numbers: C73, D2, D82.     

UNDERSTANDING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN INFRASTRUCTURE PUBLIC‒PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS AND INNOVATION

While the contemporary academic discourse regards innovation as an inherent feature of infrastructure public?private partnerships (PPPs), the conceptual link between infrastructure PPPs and innovation is narrowly understood. While most existing studies conceptualize the innovation processes and effects within the context of PPP projects, we argue that the relevance of innovation in infrastructure PPPs goes beyond specific projects. In this conceptual article, we examine why and how infrastructure PPP innovations can shape the evolution of the involved private and public sector organizations – and therefore the respective sectors – more broadly. We show that innovation in the context of PPPs has much broader implications and potential outcomes than as emphasized in the literature so far.     

我国产学研互惠性协同微观机理研究*

产学研是我国国家创新战略的核心内容之一,当前发展到协同阶段.我国产学研的协同效率较低,不足以实现产学研结构的有序化.互惠性思想和方法是激活产学研协同的动力源之一.实证检验发现:互惠性合作及交互效应对产学研项目质量、市场适应性、投入产出匹配均存在着显著的促进效应.我国产学研应走互惠性协同之路,大力培育互惠性文化、学习西方互惠性经验、以互惠合作来解决契约不完全问题、以互惠来驱动诚信合作、摒弃合作中的极端利己主义、灵活地执行合作制度和规范,才能突破产学研协同创新中的瓶颈.     

Implications of trust, fear, and reciprocity for modeling economic behavior

This paper reports three experiments with triadic or dyadic designs. The experiments include the moonlighting game in which first-mover actions can elicit positively or negatively reciprocal reactions from second movers. First movers can be motivated by trust in positive reciprocity or fear of negative reciprocity, in addition to unconditional other-regarding preferences. Second movers can be motivated by unconditional other-regarding preferences as well as positive or negative reciprocity. The experimental designs include control treatments that discriminate among actions with alternative motivations. Data from our three experiments and a fourth one are used to explore methodological questions, including the effects on behavioral hypothesis tests of within-subjects vs. across-subjects designs, single-blind vs. double-blind payoffs, random vs. dictator first-mover control treatments, and strategy responses vs. sequential play. Electronic Supplementary Material Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at . JEL Classification C70, C91, D63, D64     

Reciprocity in Caring Labor: Nurses’ Work in Residential Aged Care in Australia

Feminist economists identify reciprocity as a motivation for both paid and unpaid caring work. In general, reciprocity describes people responding to each other in similar ways, either benevolently or harmfully. The quality of care is potentially increased when care relationships are motivated by positive and generalized forms of reciprocity and decreased with negative forms of reciprocity. This study draws on nursing literature and two qualitative studies in Australian residential aged care facilities, conducted in 2002–3 and 2009, to identify a new form called “professional reciprocity.” This form of reciprocity involves deliberate and skilled relational work by nurses to facilitate mutual and interdependent exchanges with care recipients that are beneficial to both care recipients and nurses. This study argues that professional reciprocity, as a skill that can be taught, is important for achieving quality care and workers’ job satisfaction.     

Prices for cash and cash for prices? Theory and evidence on convenient pricing

A transaction between a seller and a buyer incurs a payment cost. The payment cost is borne by the seller, depending on the payment instrument the buyer chooses, cash or card. Card payment is more costly than cash payment, so the seller prefers that the buyer pays cash. In this article, we study the strategy of the seller setting a convenient price, which simplifies transactions and pushes the buyer to pay cash. The theoretical analysis, which models both the seller and the buyer in a game setting, derives two propositions: (1) the seller is more likely to set a more convenient price and (2) the buyer is more likely to pay cash a more convenient price. The empirical analysis supports both propositions. Thus, sellers adopt a convenience pricing strategy – prices for cash – and this strategy pushes buyers to pay cash – cash for prices.     

工程项目虚拟建设参与方选择的灰熵关联分析

虚拟建设是将虚拟组织理论应用于工程建设项目各参与方的集成研究,为工程建设项目的集成管理提供实施的组织平台。虚拟建设建立的是一种暂时的联盟,是项目参与各方为了加强项目建设过程中的沟通与合作而结成的项目伙伴关系。虚拟建设的组织环境能否成功促进参与方的集成,伙伴的选择是重要的决定因素之一,参与方的有效选择必然成为虚拟建设实现过程中首要考虑的问题之一。首先,构建参与方选择影响因素指标集。虚拟建设各参与方的选择是在竞争机制的基础上,更多的考虑信任的建立和“共赢”的可能性,从竞争能力和协作能力两个维度评价候选参与方的综合能力。在建立参与方选择影响因素指标集的基础上,利用灰熵关联度分析法对工程项目虚拟建设参与方的选择进行了研究,利用熵和灰色关联度的综合而得的均衡接近度来衡量候选参与方与理想对象的接近程度,从而确定各候选参与方的等级。其次通过算例验证该方法的可行性、有效性和实用性。     

On efficient partnership dissolution under ex post individual rationality

This paper studies ex post individually rational, efficient partnership dissolution in a setting with interdependent valuations. We derive a sufficient condition that ensures the existence of an efficient dissolution mechanism that satisfies Bayesian incentive compatibility, ex post budget balancedness, and ex post individual rationality. For equal-share partnerships, we show that our sufficient condition is satisfied for any symmetric type distribution whenever the interdependence in valuations is non-positive. This result improves former existence results, demonstrating that the stronger requirement of ex post individual rationality does not always rule out efficiency. We also show that if we allow for two-stage revelation mechanisms, in which agents report their realized payoffs from the allocation, as well as imposing penalties off the equilibrium path, efficient dissolution is always possible even when the interdependence is positive. We further discuss the possibility of efficient dissolution with ex post quitting rights.