Private and Public Information in Self-fulfilling Currency Crises

Received November 9, 2000; revised version received July 24, 2001     

Does Transparency of Central Banks Produce Multiple Equilibria on Currency Markets?

A recent strand of literature shows that multiple equilibria in models of markets for pegged currencies vanish if there is slightly diverse information among traders; see Morris and Shin (2001). It is known that this approach works only if the common knowledge in the market is not too precise. This has led to the conclusion that central banks should try to avoid making their information common knowledge. We develop a model in which more transparency of the central bank implies better private information, because each trader utilises public information according to her own private information. Thus, transparency makes multiple equilibria less likely.     

Asymmetric Demand Information and Foreign Direct Investment*

We examine the FDI versus exports decision of firms competing in an oligopolistic (quantity‐setting) market under demand uncertainty and asymmetric information. Compared to a firm that chooses to export, a firm that chooses to set up a plant in the host market has superior information about local market demand. In addition to the well‐known tension between the fixed set‐up costs of investment, the additional variable costs of exports and oligopoly sizes, the incentive to invest abroad is explained by the strategic learning effect. FDI may be observed even if trade costs are zero. The analysis is robust to price competition and to the possibility that a foreign firm can engage in both FDI and exports.     

Bargaining over a Common Good with Private Information*

Consider two agents who make sequential claims on a common good, receiving their respective claims only if these are compatible. We let the first mover be privately informed about the size of the good. Conventional theory predicts multiple equilibria, and the intuitive criterion predicts that the first player claims the entire good. Our experimental results reject the intuitive criterion. Private information reduces the claim and the profit of the first mover. However, we cannot reject that the subjects play according to a perfect Bayesian equilibrium (PBE). Most subjects play according to a PBE, and almost all successful coordination occurs at the even split.     

When Borch's Theorem Does Not Apply: Some Key Implications of Market Incompleteness,with Policy Relevance Today

Markets are incomplete when the assets available to the agents do not span the space of future contingencies. In that case, competitive equilibria on the markets for assets and commodities fail (generically) to be constrained efficient. Pareto‐superior allocations can be implemented through price/wage rigidities and quantity constraints. However, nominal rigidities are conducive to multiple equilibria, implying endogenous macroeconomic uncertainties that compound the primitive (exogenous) uncertainties. This paper defines a temporary general equilibrium for which there exists a set of equilibria defining an inflation – unemployment locus. Various policy implications are drawn, with relevance to the current crisis.     

信息通信公共服务:概念、内涵与评价体系

通过对信息通信公共服务的概念和内涵进行界定和探讨,构建了包含4项评价维度(服务投入、服务资源、服务提供和服务效果)和16项具体指标的信息通信公共服务评价体系,并采取层次分析法确定了指标权重。     

An Experimental Study of the Effect of Private Information in the Coase Theorem

We investigate, in an experimental setting, the effect of private information on the Coase theorem's predictions of efficiency and allocative neutrality. For a two-person bargaining game, we find significantly more inefficiency and allocative bias in the case of private information compared with the case of complete information. We also find substantial bargaining breakdown, which is not predicted by the Coase theorem. For the case of private information, we reject the Coase theorem in favor of the alternative of a generalized version of the Myerson—Satterthwaite theorem, which predicts inefficiency, allocative bias in the direction of the disagreement point, and some bargaining breakdown.