Difference-form contest success functions and effort levels in contests

We examine players' equilibrium effort levels in a contest with difference-form contest success functions in which two players compete with each other to win a prize. We show the following. At the pure-strategy Nash equilibrium of a simultaneous-move game, and in the subgame-perfect equilibrium of a sequential-move game, only one of the players expends effort or neither player expends effort. If one player's composite strength is far greater than the other player's, only the player with greater composite strength expends effort whether they move simultaneously or sequentially. If the players' valuations for the prize and their marginal probabilities of winning at (0, 0) are sufficiently small, neither player expends effort whether they move simultaneously or sequentially.     

Bargaining, binding contracts, and competitive wages

In a model where many workers bargain with one firm and sign binding contracts, we show existence of a stationary subgame perfect equilibrium. If the production function satisfies decreasing returns, each worker receives a share of his marginal product (treating all other workers as employed) in equilibrium. Thus, wages are competitive. This is in contrast to Stole and Zweibel (1996, Rev. Econ. Stud. 63, 375–410), who assume that contracts are non-binding and find that the payoff of a worker is a weighted average of the inframarginal contributions. Hence, binding contracts imply lower wages than non-binding contracts.     

A note on the competitive search model of Azariadis and Pissarides

In this short note, I reinvestigate a recent paper of Azariadis and Pissarides (Unemployment dynamics with international capital mobility, European Economic Review, 2007(51), 27–48) where wages are determined in a competitive search setting. I show that their equation on the equilibrium wage rate is incorrect. I derive a correct wage equation and perform the numerical analysis. The correction does not change their result and high capital mobility still raises the variability of the unemployment rate.     

Just looking for a good game: competitive balance in the Korean Professional Baseball League

Rottenberg’s uncertainty of outcome hypothesis is about preferences that can vary across fans and sports. We provide the first evidence of the empirical power of the hypothesis in the Korean Professional Baseball League (KPBL). In a panel data set, team-level aggregation over years shows that fans of this league attend in ways consistent with the hypothesis at the level of game uncertainty and consecutive season uncertainty, but only the first is statistically significant. KPBL fans appear to just be looking for a good game. This is consistent with the nearly complete concentration of post-season participation among a very few teams outside of the major population centre in Seoul and a lack of local team identification among KPBL fans. Our work adds to the diversity of league structures in the competitive balance literature since talent levels in KPBL are the result of parent company advertising choices rather than geographic identification. There are research questions and a policy implication.     

Sustainable competitive advantage and stock performance: the case for wide moat stocks

‘In business, I look for economic castles protected by unbreachable “Moats”’. Warren Buffett Companies that have sustainable competitive advantages should be able to create a barrier (Moat) to prevent or lessen competition from other firms. The wider the Moat the greater the barrier and the more secure the company’s profitability. Using the Morningstar classification of ‘Wide Moat’ stocks, we construct annually rebalanced equal- and value-weighted portfolios to analyse their performance in order to determine if they deliver superior performance relative to standard benchmark portfolios. The period for our analysis extends from June 2002 through May 2014. We find that the ‘Wide Moat’ portfolios outperform both the S&P 500 and Russell 3000 indices generating higher average monthly and annualized returns, Sharpe Ratio, Sortino Ratio, Treynor Ratio, Omega Ratio, Upside Potential Ratio, M², M² Alpha, and cumulative returns. When we compute alpha using Carhart four-factor and Fama–French five-factor models, we find that ‘Wide Moat’ portfolios had significantly positive risk-adjusted alphas with both the models. ‘Wide Moat’ portfolios also lost less value during the 2007–2009 financial crisis compared to both S&P 500 and Russell 3000. In conclusion, we find that ‘Wide Moat’ stocks have created significant value for their investors over the course of our study.     

Application capability of e-business, e-business success, and organizational performance: Empirical evidence from China

Previous research efforts suggested that firms' overall e-business success tends to deliver greater organizational performance. However, few researchers examined how a firm leverages e-business investment to gain greater e-business success. Even fewer researchers investigated the different impacts of different levels of e-business success on organizational performance. This paper addresses two questions: (1) what capabilities influence a firms' ability to build e-business success and enjoy greater organizational performance, where firm-level e-business success is measured by e-business service capability and IT-enabled collaborative advantage; and (2) whether the two ways of measuring e-business success result in different impacts on organizational performance? We propose that a firm's application capability of e-business involving systems development and systems usage is positively related to a firm's overall e-business success, thus having a positive impact on organizational performance. We use survey data from 152 Chinese manufacturing firms and their B2B e-business systems participants to test our theoretical hypotheses and proposed model. The findings suggest that both systems development and systems usage have significant and positive impacts on e-business service capability, which in turn leads to greater IT-enabled collaborative advantage. This finding could be translated into the important role of a firm's application capability of e-business on e-business success. It is concluded that the application capability of e-business acts as one of the main mechanisms through which the e-business investment leads to greater e-business success. We also find that IT-enabled collaborative advantage, compared with e-business service capability, has a more significant and greater impact on organizational performance. This study extends prior e-business success research by opening up the ‘black box’ between a firm's e-business investment and its e-business success, and by distinguishing the relative impacts of e-business service capability versus IT-enabled collaborative advantage on organizational performance. Another contribution of this study is that the effect of context factors (firm size, industry, and system duration) in developing country on our proposed model.     

个人信用征信与保护的冲突与平衡

个人征信行业和制度的发展是市场经济发展的必然,是市场交易安全的保障,其本质要求个人信用信息的开放和共享,而个人信用信息的私密性的特征决定了个人信用征信机制的构建与个人隐私权保护的冲突不可避免。可以说,个人信用隐私权的适度限制与个人征信信息的适当公开,二者的平衡与协调是个人征信体系建立成败的关键问题。在个人信用信息的征集、管理及使用过程中,都应注重个人信用信息保护的平衡。     

A consumer-based model of competitive diffusion: the multiplicative effects of global and local network externalities

Competitive diffusion of two incompatible technologies, such as PC vs. Macintosh, VHS vs. Betamax and so on, is studied under the framework of a spatial game in which consumers are distributed on a two-dimensional square lattice network. The consumers play coordination-like games with their nearest neighbors and imitate the most successful strategy in their neighborhood in terms of aggregated payoffs after each round. The effects of global network externality are realized in the dynamic payoff matrix of the game, and the framework of spatial game provides the model with the effects of local network externality. These two types of externalities are set as multiplicative, that is, as nonlinear. Both simulations and mean-field approximation show that not only total but also partial standardization (robust polymorphic equilibrium) occurs depending upon the parameters and initial configurations, even when there are positive effects of both global and local network externalities. Moreover, effects of innovation factors that alter paths toward a lock-in situation are studied. It is shown that both the timing and the size of the innovation factors matter for a disadvantaged technology in order to overwhelm a market.JEL Classification: C7, D8, O3We are obliged to Professor John Paul Boyd at the University of California, Irvine and our anonymous referees for their constructive comments.     

How trade and capital restrictions affect the probability of a balance of trade disturbance

Free market economists argue that national authorities avoid restrictions on the free movement of goods, services and financial capital between countries. Yet, countries continually choose to restrict the flow of capital both into and out of the country. Why is this done? Is it done to protect the domestic banking system, to control the domestic money supply, to manage the exchange rate, to provide stability for internal markets or to avoid wide swings in the availability of capital? Are these controls effective in precluding wide swings in a country's international trade balance? This article uses panel data in a logit model to analyse policy choice with respect to an international trade and/or investment regime. The goal is to identify choices effective in reducing the likelihood of a severe Balance of Trade Disturbance (BTD) and determine if the appropriate choice is related to per capita income (pci).     

所有权结构、自私性努力与投资阻塞问题

许多学者基于代理人和代理人之间的关系分析了国有企业的"内耗"和地方政府的"内拼",但他们分析的只是次级"内耗"和次级"内拼",是给定所有权安排下的"内耗"和"内拼",他们没有注意到委托人和代理人之间的初级"内耗"和初级"内拼"。本文从投资阻塞的视角分析了国有企业的初级"内耗"和地方政府的初级"内拼"。我们的分析表明,通过议价力量配置来解决国有企业的初级"内耗"问题是可以奏效的,但是通过议价力量配置来解决地方政府的初级"内拼"问题却是很难奏效的,必须在"立宪"层次上界定好中央政府和地方政府的控制权边界,否则就会带来不断重复的试错性成本(比如宏观调控成本)。     

中国国际收支双顺差成因与影响分析

国际收支双顺差已成为中国经济中备受关注的问题。多年的双顺差和外汇储备的大量累积已经影响了我国经济的可持续性,若要清除其负面影响,必须要转变经济增长方式,走消费、出口和投资协调拉动的经济增长模式。     

Search theory,competitive equilibrium,and the Nash bargaining solution

We investigate a canonical search-theoretic model without entry. Two agents are randomly matched with a long side being rationed. The matched agents face a pair of randomly drawn non-transferable payoffs, and then choose whether or not to form a partnership subject to a small probability of exogenous break down. As this probability and friction vanish, the Nash bargaining solution emerges as the unique undominated strategy equilibrium outcome if the mass of each party is the same. If the size of one party is larger than the other, the short side extracts the entire surplus, a sharp contrast to Rubinstein and Wolinsky (1985) [16].     

External wealth, the trade balance, and the real exchange rate

We examine the link between the net foreign asset position, the trade balance and the real exchange rate. In particular, we decompose the impact of a country's net foreign asset position (‘external wealth’) on its long-run real exchange rate into two mechanisms: the relation between external wealth and the trade balance; and, holding fixed other determinants, a negative relation between the trade balance and the real exchange rate. We also provide additional evidence that the relative price of nontradables is an important channel linking the trade balance and the real exchange rate.     

An Apartment Story: To Introduce the Study of Spot,Forward, and Futures Markets,the Term Structure,and Arbitrage

An imagined apartment condominium complex is used as a device to teach how real markets work.     

Sustainable development,the Hartwick rule and optimal growth

Defining sustainable development as non-declining utility, the consistency of this concept with the Hartwick rule and optimal growth is explored when resources are exhaustible. A simple proof that a generalized Hartwick rule is necessary and sufficient for constant consumption is derived. The existence of a maximal constant consumption path is shown to depend critically on the elasticity of substitution; if this is less than 1, consumption declines; if it is greater than 1 then consumption is not maximal; if it is equal to 1 (the Cobb-Douglas case) then existence is proved. Consumption can increase along an optimal path if the pure rate of time preference is 0; if it is non-zero then consumption declines.     

Return migration, wage differentials, and the optimal migration duration

In simple static models, migration increases with the wage differential between host- and home-country. In a dynamic framework, and if migrations are temporary, the size of the migrant population in the host country depends also on the migration duration. This paper analyses optimal migration durations in a model which rationalises the decision of the migrant to return to his home country, despite persistently higher wages in the host country. The analysis shows that, if migrations are temporary, the optimal migration duration may decrease if the wage differential grows larger. Using micro data for Germany, the second part of the paper provides empirical evidence which is compatible with this hypothesis.     

全要素生产率、人民币汇率与中国贸易收支——基于跨期最优选择理论的实证研究

文章首先以跨期最优分析框架为基础建立以中国贸易收支为研究对象的理论模型,然后基于中国1999-2009年省际面板数据,运用面板FMOLS估计方法,从全国和地区两个层面对中国全要素生产率、人民币实际汇率与中国贸易收支的关系展开实证分析。研究表明,中国贸易部门内资企业和外资企业的全要素生产率提升均对中国实际贸易余额增长产生了正面影响,其中东部地区的促进作用最为强劲;中国非贸易部门全要素生产率与其实际贸易余额负相关,其中东部和中部地区非贸易部门全要素生产率提升会显著减少该地区的实际贸易差额;人民币实际有效汇率提升对中国实际贸易收支具有显著的负面影响,并按照东部、中部和西部地区依次加重。根据上述分析结果,文章提出了调节中国贸易收支的相关政策建议。     

Keeping up with the Joneses, consumer ethnocentrism, and optimal taxation

This paper sets up a two-good (domestically- and internationally-produced goods) model of a small open economy with consumption externalities and uses it to examine the optimal taxation. Since keeping up with the Joneses leads an individual consumption's to impose a negative externality on the consumption of others, a consumption tax and tariff are thereby socially desirable to correct this distortion. Due to the fact that the government has to account for additional distortion caused by consumer ethnocentrism and that keeping up with the Joneses in the consumption of domestic goods tends to reinforce the influence of ethnocentrism on the purchase of domestic products, the consumption of imported goods is subject to a higher tariff rate because of the cross-market externality. Of interest, if consumption only involves an own-market externality, there is no cyclical consequence for the optimal taxes. However, if consumption involves both own- and cross-market externalities, the optimal tariff is state-contingent and, more specifically, is countercyclical.     

休闲教育与图书馆的文化休闲功能

时代的发展要求图书馆充分发挥文化休闲功能,引导大众休闲.因此图书馆应正确定位图书馆的文化休闲功能,利用图书馆作为休闲教育的平台实施休闲教育,通过开展形式多样的服务活动,充分发挥图书馆的休闲功能.     

英语科技语篇中模糊限制语的语用功能分析

模糊限制语作为模糊语言的一个重要组成部分,在交流中起着重要的作用。科技英语作为一种特殊语体要求用词准确、行文严谨,但仍有大量的模糊限制语存在于英语科技语篇中,体现出了不同的语用功能。因此,列举实例阐述了模糊限制语在科技语体中的几个语用功能,以期进一步深化对模糊限制语的功能研究。