Co-integration,error correction and the Fisher effect: a clarification

The presence of co-integration between interest rates and inflation implies the existence of an error-correction model and the possibility of two sources of causation. Causality testing which does not account for feedback through the error-correction mechanism as well as through the error-correction mechanism as well as through the lagged changes in the variables can produce misleading reuslts. Reinterpreting Atkin' error-correction model and causality tests in this framework points to a feedback relationship between inflation and post-tax nominal interest rates. These findings are consistent with previously published results but are in contrast to Atkinsapos; conclusion of one-way causality from inflation to interest rates.     

Weak and strong monotone comparative statics

Summary This paper develops necessary and sufficient conditions for the set of solutions to an optimization problem to be nondecreasing in a weak sense still strong enough to guarantee the existence of an increasing selection, and thus strong enough to guarantee monotonicity when the solution is unique, as well as necessary and sufficient conditions for the set of optimizers to be nondecreasing in a strong sense which is strong enough to rule out the possibility of a decreasing selection. These necessary and sufficient conditions are variations of quasisupermodularity and the single crossing property introduced in Milgrom-Shannon [13]. Moreover, to determine when an objective function satisfies these conditions, this paper develops several characterizations of quasisupermodularity and the single crossing property and their variants, both in terms of differential conditions and in terms of restrictions on the structure of the level sets of these functions. Several examples are given to choice theory under loss aversion and to an auction problem.I am grateful to Don Brown and Paul Milgrom for numerous helpful conversations concerning earlier versions of this paper. This paper is a revised and expanded version of the paper An Ordinal Theory of Games with Strategic Complementarities (Shannon [15]). I am pleased to acknowledge the financial support of the National Science Foundation, and an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship.     

Weak and strong multimarket bidding rings

We consider bidders who are simultaneously participating in private value second-price sealed bid auctions in multiple markets. While active in each market, each bidder is associated with a unique home market in which it can potentially serve as a ring center. Pairs of bidders can establish bilateral agreements to be members of bidding rings in each others’ home markets. Rings can be weak or strong depending respectively on whether side payments are permitted or not. Weak multimarket rings have been shown to take the form of exclusive groups of completely connected bidders. We consider strong multimarket bidding rings and show that they assume a radically different architecture of dominant groups, stars, and interlinked stars. Since bidding rings are tacit, and therefore unobservable, we develop observable implications of multimarket rings that can detect the existence of collusion as well as its form (i.e., weak or strong).     

Weak and strong sustainability in the SEEA: Concepts and measurement

In this paper, we explain how the latest international handbook on environmental accounting, the System of Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting or SEEA (United Nations, European Commission, International Monetary Fund, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and World Bank (2003). Handbook of National Accounting, Studies in Methods. New York, United Nations.), can be used to measure weak and strong sustainability. We emphasise the importance of understanding the conceptual differences between weak and strong sustainability. We then outline what we consider to be current best practice in measurement, all the time flagging the relationship between our discussion and that of the SEEA-2003. This is an important task in our view, because, despite covering a very wide range of relevant conceptual and empirical issues, the handbook is by design not meant to provide clear guidelines for the purpose of measuring sustainability in either its weak or strong version.     

Government bailouts and default risks of a duopoly: strong bank versus weak bank

A duopolistic loan market includes a strong bank without the problem of early closure that opts out of government bailouts and a weak bank with this problem that participates in the bailout programmes of distressed loan purchases and direct equity injections. A direct implication of our framework is that the strong bank’s equity will be priced as a standard call option, while the weak bank’s equity will be priced as a down-and-out call option. We find that an increase in either bailout (i.e. distressed loan purchases and direct equity injections) directly decreases the weak bank’s default risk but indirectly increases the strong bank’s default risk. Accordingly, either bailout contributes to banking stability since the indirect positive effect insufficiently offsets the direct negative effect, giving an overall negative response of default risks to an increase in either bailout. Higher competition by shifting to quasi-competition from collusion increases banking stability under either bailout. Our analysis suggests that competition is aligned with the regulatory objective of improving stability.     

Rent seeking and rent dissipation: A neutrality result

We consider rent seeking contests between at least two agents who might value the prize differently. We capture a wide range of institutional aspects of contests by analyzing a class of contest success functions fulfilling several properties. The main properties are anonymity and a condition on the elasticity of a rent seeker's win probability with respect to her effort. We show the existence of a mixed-strategy equilibrium and establish equilibrium payoffs. In this equilibrium complete rent dissipation holds. Our results imply a partial robustness result for the all-pay auction.     

Price rigidity and market-clearing: a conceptual clarification

This article tests the view (derived from Hicks and Patinkin)that non-market clearance may be caused by slow adjustment (‘processrigidity’). There are models where market-rationing ispresent and derives from some form of rigidity, but this rigiditycannot be considered as process rigidity. It is similarly possibleto accommodate the idea of process rigidity within the Marshallianresearch programme. What is missing is that market-rationingmight be its corollary. The reason such a causal link is oftenbelieved to exist lies in a generic use of the concept of rigidity,used to designate alternative and incompatible phenomena: ‘exogenousend-state rigidity’ and ‘equilibrium end-state rigidity’,as well as process rigidity. It is true that these first twoforms of rigidity create market rationing. The belief that slowadjustment also generates market rationing results from theunwarranted extension to process rigidity of conclusions whichare only valid for the first two.     

Bergstrom,Blume, and Varian: Voluntary contributions and neutrality

Bergstrom, Blume, and Varian provided a neutrality result for the private provision of public goods that has inspired a considerable literature. The result has significant implications for income redistribution and broader policy interventions. This paper reviews the basic result and its applications, and discusses extensions to general private provision economies.     

On model ambiguity and money neutrality

We solve for the equilibrium of a stochastic neo-classical continuous time model without and with money under model ambiguity. We show that: (i) the correction for ambiguity stemming from the money supply is nil at equilibrium; (ii) money is neutral with respect to the stock market equilibrium (the equity risk premium); (iii) money is not neutral with respect to consumption and capital accumulation, and its effect may be quantitatively substantial; (iv) the preference for model robustness affects all the real economic variables as well as the expected inflation rate and the nominal interest rate.     

Growth and the neutrality of money

Using two simple stochastic growth models that nest both exogenous and endogenous growth, this paper shows that money should not be neutral in the long run if it is not neutral in the short run and if growth is endogenous. By contrast, if growth is exogenous, money should be neutral in the long run. The paper also tests whether money is neutral in the long run, finding no contrary evidence. Given that money is not neutral in the short run, this finding indicates that exogenous growth cannot be rejected in favor of endogenous growth.     

Net neutrality and asymmetric platform competition

Journal of Regulatory Economics - In this paper we analyze the interplay between access to the last-mile network and net neutrality in the market for Internet access. We consider two competing...     

Tax neutrality and the social discount rate: A suggested framework

There are few problems in tax analysis which have generated as much study and discussion among economist as the question of how to formulate ‘neutral’ tax incentives for investment. Yet no consensus has been reached concerning the proper approach to take when adjusting taxes. Comparing the two fundamental notions of neutrality found in the literature, referred to here as Present Value Rules and Internal Rate of Return Rules, we argue that, to the extent that neutrality is a useful concept, only the latter of these approaches makes sense in terms of achievement of production efficiency.     

Panel cointegration and the neutrality of money

Most econometric methods for testing the proposition of long-run monetary neutrality rely on the assumption that money and real output do not cointegrate, a result that is usually supported by the data. This paper argues that these results can be attributed in part to the low power of univariate tests, and that a violation of the noncointegration assumption is likely to result in a nonrejection of the neutrality proposition. To alleviate this problem, two new and more powerful panel cointegration tests are proposed that can be used under quite general conditions. The empirical results obtained from applying these tests to a panel covering ten countries between 1870 and 1986 suggest money and real output are cointegrated, and hence that the neutrality proposition must be rejected.      

Sheila Dow's concept of dualism: clarification, criticism and development

This paper analyses Dow's concept of dualism and decomposesit into eight categories, one not explicitly identified by Dow.It is argued that Dow's original definition is underdevelopedand thereby lacking practical relevance. The paper presentsa development of Dow's definition, which allows her to attackthe splitting of polar categories. This significantly increasesthe relevance of Dow's definition of dualism and buttressesher criticisms of the mainstream. The paper also identifies‘heuristic dualism’ in Dow's work. A distinctioncan be made between Dow's ‘heuristic dualism’, whichis strictly an intermediate step in an argument, and the mainstreamuse of fixed dualistic categories.     

Industrial policy and the neutrality of the state

Some insights from recent debates on the Marxian theory of the state are applied to the analysis of state intervention in production in liberal democratic capitalist societies. It is argued that such industrial policies tend to undermine the apparent neutrality both of the state and of the market as a mechanism for the allocation of resources.     

Testing of the rational expectations and structural neutrality hypotheses

In this paper we examine the tests of the new classical rational expectations and structural neutrality hypotheses undertaken by Leiderman (1980) using a model of money growth and unemployment for the United States developed by Barro (1977). Employing the data used in the studies by Barro and Leiderman we are able to construct an alternative model of money growth and unemployment against which the Barro-Leiderman model is rejected along with the joint hypothesis of rational expectations and structural neutrality.     

Basic income,liberal neutrality,socialism, and work

Liberal critics often object to basic income (BI) on the grounds that it violates reciprocity and is biased toward those who choose voluntarily to opt out of work and thus violate the principle of liberal neutrality toward conceptions of the good life. In the first part of this paper I argue that liberal neutrality favors BI. Marxist critics of BI are less likely to accept liberal neutrality, but I argue in the second part that the argument for BI in the first part applies with equal force to Marxist objections that BI is unfairly exploitative of workers. Marxists are also less likely to accept current labor market trends, seeing socialism as affording more opportunity for guaranteeing everyone a right to decent work, and suspecting BI of making the unfair inequalities of capitalism a little more palatable while diverting attention from a more equitable socialist alternative. I argue that BI is not incompatible with socialism or Marxism, and should not be opposed to but rather combined with strategies for full employment.