Risk Aversion and the Full Costs of Rent-Seeking*

Risk aversion is frequently postulated as one of the factors that lead to under-dissipation of rents. However, the formal analyses which have supported this contention and suggested that the effects can be large have focused solely on the expenditures of contestants, ignoring the associated costs of risk. The paper argues that this omission is wrong in principle, and that when corrected the presence of risk aversion in fact leads to substantial increases in the extent of rent dissipation, although an exception is when there is a very strong combination of risk aversion and asymmetry.     

信任约束、交易费用与内部关系治理——华人家族企业行为模式分析

华人家族企业较重视"五缘"关系,特别是亲缘关系。这种关系是家族主义人际信任的认知基础。人际信任关系的不同对交易费用产生重要影响,现阶段家族企业的内部治理模式(表现为关系治理)是现存儒家文化积淀和现有企业规模上的最小交易费用安排。随着西方文化对中国传统文化的渗透和家族企业规模的不断扩大,华人家族企业的"关系治理"将被"理性"的制度化治理所取代。     

International Capital Mobility and the Costs of Us Import Restraints*

Abstract This paper evaluates general equilibrium welfare effects of tariffs, quotas, and voluntary export restraints under different assumptions about international capital mobility. We show analytically that, when induced terms-of-trade and rental-rate effects are considered, the qualitative influence of capital mobility on the costs of protection cannot be ascertained unambiguously. Simulation estimates for the US indicate the practical importance of capital mobility, as well as of terms-of-trade and rental-rate adjustments, in determining the ultimate welfare effects of import restraints.     

The Welfare Costs of the Australian Telecommunications Pricing Structure*

Australian telecommunications pricing has developed in an environment which is uncompetitive, subject to pressures to cross-subsidize and insufficiently cognizant of relevant costs and demands. STD and local call charges are too high and access charges too low. Compared with a structure which charged marginal usage costs and retrieved costs of subscribers' loops and overheads through access charges, the pricing structure has an estimated efficiency cost of about $240 m in 1985–86.     

On Nations’ Size and Transportation Costs*

This paper develops a noncooperative Nash model in which a closed border is opened to trade between countries that differ in size and transportation costs. the paper suggests an explanation as to why economists have not convinced policymakers to lift all barriers to free trade. the questions we pose are: Who will gain as a result of opening the borders? Is free trade beneficial to the two parties involved? Do they both share equally in the fruits of free trade? Which country, large or small, benefits most? It is shown that free trade is not beneficial to both countries.     

The Internal Organization of the Firm, Transaction Costs, and Macroeconomic Growth

This articleanalyzes the links between the internal organization of the firmand macroeconomic growth. We present a Schumpeterian growth modelin which firms face agency costs due to the existence of asymmetriesof information and the formation of vertical collusions insidethose firms. To respond to the threat of collusion, optimal collusion-proofincentive contracts depend on the efficiency of collusive sidecontracting within organizations. Collusion affects thereforethe firms' profitability, the incentives to innovate, and, finally,the stationary equilibrium growth rate of the economy. On theother hand, when the growth rate is small, the prospects of long-termrelationships within firms increase the agents' incentives toinvest in a better collusive technology. We then discuss thetwo-way relationships between the structure of internal transactioncosts, organizational technologies, and macroeconomic growth.     

The Marginal Costs of Electricity Supply in Victoria*

This paper discusses some of the determinants of the costs of supplying electricity by season, by time of day and by location. A model is constructed of the State Electricity Commission of Victoria grid to illustrate the propositions. It is found that current tariffs bear little relationship to the opportunity costs of supplying electricity.     

Student Assistance Schemes and the Supply of Highly Skilled Manpower: The Australian Experience*

In most countries national higher education systems provide the major source of supply of highly skilled manpower. Whilst supply from this source is a function of the demand for higher education places, their supply, and the internal efficiency and flexibility of higher education institutions, comparatively little is known of the relative importance of these determinants, what in turn determines them, and how they interreact. Any generalized answers to these questions will be strongly mitigated by institutional, demographic and socio-economic variations over time and between countries. This paper analyzes the influence of immediate financial variables, as important elements in the price of higher education, as they applied in the era of Commonwealth Scholarship Schemes in Australia.     

Exploration Versus Extraction Costs as Determinants of Optimal Mineral-Rights Leases*

Leasing agreements concerning the exploitation of mineral deposits on government lands are analyzed with a special emphasis on the distinction between exploration and extraction activities. Results include a demonstration that the conditions for the optimal sharing of exploration costs are closely related to the conditions for the optimal pricing of public goods. Other results include a demonstration of how the sharing of exploration costs relative to the sharing of production costs is affected by asymmetries in information as well as by differences in risk aversion.     

Costs under Regulation and Deregulation: The Case of US Passenger Airlines*

Privatization, the removal of regulatory control and similar changes in property rights within firms can be expected to shift cost functions downward and permit increased output, lower final service prices and more efficient resource allocation The US Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 was clearly expected to have these effects. This paper investigates whether the widely anticipated reduction in costs following the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 actually occurred. We utilize an empirical procedure that explicitly takes the multi-product characteristics into account and identifies the various sources of changes in costs. The change in airline's costs are decomposed into components and separately measured to identify the effects attributable to deregulation A number of other countries are now considering important changes in the public ownership and control of their airline industries and a quantitative assessment of the actual effect of US deregulation on costs may be thought of as providing lower bound estimates of what might be expected in other countries.     

Alternative Schemes for Distributing Transfers to Natural Disaster Victims: Analysis and Implementation*

This paper outlines a scheme for distributing natural disaster relief to individuals derived from the principles of equity in taxation. This scheme is then given a specific algebraic formulation which, given a constraint on the total value of grants to be distributed, can be solved subject to grant-making bodies determining one of two policy parameters, viz, a subsistence income level below which disaster victims would bear no damage themselves, or the rate at which grants are reduced as peoples' incomes increase. The scheme as outlined can be adapted to policy makers' different specifications of one of these two parameters. Empirical implementation of the scheme is illustrated.     

菜单成本和菲利普斯曲线

这篇文章提出了一个货币经济模型,在该模型中,个别厂商受制于特别生产率冲击和全面通货膨胀的影响。卖方在承担实际"菜单成本"的情况下才可能改变价格,利用Klenow     

Distributive Politics and the Costs of Centralization

This paper studies the choice between centralization and decentralization of fiscal policy in a political economy setting. With centralization, regional delegates vote over agendas comprising sets of region–specific projects. The outcome is inefficient because the choice of projects is insufficiently sensitive to within–region benefits. The number of projects funded may be non–monotonic in the strength of project externalities. The efficiency gains from decentralization, and the performance of "constitutional rules" (such as majority voting) which may be used to choose between decentralization and centralization, are then discussed in this framework. Weaker externalities and more heterogeneity between regions need not increase the efficiency gain from decentralization.     

Dynamic Costs of the Draft

Abstract. We propose a dynamic general‐equilibrium model with human capital accumulation to evaluate the economic consequences of compulsory services (such as military draft or social work). Our analysis identifies a so far ignored dynamic cost arising from distortions in time allocation over the life cycle. We provide conservative estimates for the excess burden that arises when the government relies on forced labor rather than on income taxation to finance public expenditures. Our results suggest that eliminating the draft could produce considerable dynamic gains, both in terms of GDP and lifetime utility.     

On the Dynamic Consistency of Reform and Compensation Schemes

To make reform possible, politically strong losers have to be bought out. Whether the losers are fully compensated upfront or given running compensation depends on their political influence after reform. We build a simple but general model to study dynamic consistency of compensation and political support for reform. We find that positive but decreasing compensation is required in every period up to the last period the losers have political influence. In that period it increases dramatically. If there are limited resources available to compensate the losers upfront, increasing the cost of reversing the reform may reduce the political feasibility of reform.     

论资本运行成本

本文界定了资本运行成本的确定原则,在分析资本运行成本的计算及资本扩张成本计量的基础上,提出了资本扩张中应注意的一些问题。     

内部审计与内部控制的关系

从内部控制成为内部审计的重要内容,监督和评价内部控制的健全有效是内部审计的重要职责两方面讨论内部审 计与内部控制的关系,并分析在新形势下,如何加强中国企业内部控制制度的建设,促进内部审计事业的发展。