EX ANTE INVESTMENT,EX POST REMEDIES,AND PRODUCT LIABILITY*

A firm can increase product safety through ex ante investment and can remedy quality problems after sales. An increase in product liability raises returns to ex ante investment through higher consumer demand, but may also negatively affect the investment incentive due to more ex post remedial activities. The trade‐off between these “output” and “substitution” effects can result in an inverted U‐shaped relationship between product liability and ex ante investment. We find that the firm prefers full liability, but consumer surplus can be higher under partial liability. We further identify conditions under which full liability or partial liability is socially optimal.     

Aggregation and pairwise aggregation of demand when the distribution of income is fixed

This paper derives necessary and sufficient conditions for “pairwise aggregation” of the demand functions of a group of consumers (conditions under which the mean demand for each pair of consumers satisfies the Slutsky restrictions) when the distribution of income is fixed. The sufficient conditions imply existence of a “representative” competitive consumer whose demand is the mean demand of the group. The necessary conditions imply that such a representative consumer exists for every fixed income distribution only if the consumers have homothetic preferences or, alternatively, if for each price vector, all the consumers' income expansion paths lie in the same plane.     

Welfare analysis in a two-stage inverse demand model: an application to harvest changes in the Chesapeake Bay

Like many agricultural commodities, fish and shellfish are highly perishable and producers cannot easily adjust supply in the short run to respond to changes in demand. In these cases it is more appropriate to conduct welfare analysis using inverse demand models that take quantities as given and allow prices to adjust to clear the market. One challenge faced by economists conducting demand analysis is how to limit the number of commodities in the analysis while accounting for the relevant substitutability and complementarity among goods. A common approach in direct demand modeling is to assume weak separability of the utility function and apply a multi-stage budgeting approach. This approach has not, however, been applied to an inverse demand system or the associated welfare analysis. This paper develops a two-stage inverse demand model and derives the total quantity flexibilities which describe how market clearing prices respond to supply changes in other commodity groups. The model provides the means to estimate consumer welfare impacts of an increase in finfish and shellfish harvest from the Chesapeake Bay while recognizing that harvests from other regions are potential substitutes. Comparing the two-stage results with single-stage analysis of the same data shows that ignoring differentiation of harvests from different regions, or the availability of substitutes not affected by a supply shock, can bias welfare estimates.     

Cournot games with biconcave demand

Biconcavity is a simple condition on inverse demand that corresponds to the ordinary concept of concavity after simultaneous parameterized transformations of price and quantity. The notion is employed here in the framework of the homogeneous-good Cournot model with potentially heterogeneous firms. The analysis leads to unified conditions, respectively, for the existence of a pure-strategy equilibrium via nonincreasing best-response selections, for existence via quasiconcavity, and for the uniqueness of the equilibrium. The usefulness of the generalizations is illustrated in cases where inverse demand is either “nearly linear” or isoelastic. It is also shown that commonly made assumptions regarding large outputs are often redundant.     

Multilateral currency substitution and capital flows as sources of instability in the soe demand for money function — A case study

Using monthly data for Ireland we test the hypothesis that the combined effects of currency substitution and capital mobility renders the demand for money function subject to instability over time. The empirical evidence supports the view that both “the” expected exchange rate change, giving rise to currency substitution, and the latter as a component, along with “the” foreign interest rate, of the gross yield on foreign currency-denominated assets, giving rise to capital mobility, are important determinants of the domestic demand for money. Their inclusion as arguments yields a money demand function which is more stable than if they are (incorrectly) excluded.     

战略性经营者激励选择与国际市场份额竞争

本文首先用具有线性需求和规模收益不变生产技术的Cournot双头模型来刻画国际市场份额竞争。指出 ,如果参与国际竞争的本国企业是所有权与经营权分离的企业 ,那么 ,无论竞争对手是否是所有权与经营权分离的企业 ,本国企业所有者总是有积极性操纵经营者的激励 ,特别的 ,在只有本国企业作出单边激励选择的情况下 ,这种操纵可以使本国企业生产Stackelberg领先者产量成为可以置信的承诺。它在这里所起到的作用是与出口补贴在战略性贸易政策分析中所起到的作用相一致的。如果考虑到从过去的GATT到现在的WTO都规定政府不得以任何形式参与国际竞争 ,这个结论就更有趣了。因为无须政府帮助 ,本国企业所有者凭借自身的力量就能实现有利于本国企业的竞争结果。这种民间对政府的替代是有意义的。在双边激励选择的情况下 ,两国企业陷入了“囚徒困境”。本国企业只有诉诸于本国政府对国际市场的干预 ,才能重新获得Stackelberg领先者的地位 ;但与对它的传统理解相比 ,这种地位已然弱化。最后 ,我们还证明 ,根据相当一般的条件 ,所有者决定的最优经营者激励只与竞争类型 (数量竞争还是价格竞争 )有关 ,而与企业的产品类型 (替代品还是互补品 )无关。     

Substitution and expansion effects in production theory: The case of joint production

This paper is concerned with a systematic examination of what happens when a firm that has been in equilibrium at certain prices of inputs and prices of outputs experiences a change in these prices. The mutual effects between inputs and between outputs and the cross effects between inputs and outputs are explored by means of various kinds of decomposition equations in production theory. A definition of the “normal” technology is given to show that inputs are not gross substitutes, nor are outputs, and that the input-output relations are not regressive.     

Are human rights and economic well-being substitutes? The evidence from migration patterns across the Indian states

The objective of this paper is to study the relationship between the demand for human rights and the demand for economic prosperity from the “exit” perspective, looking at migration patterns. We investigate intra-national migration in India, which is a federation of various states that feature significant economic and political differences. The paper finds that the quality of human rights protection and the economic well-being in the target state are substitutes with respect to determining patterns of migration. These results depend on framing effects; human rights complaints appear to be interpreted differently by migrants, depending on the trust in the government in the target state.     

An Alternative Post-Keynesian Framework for Understanding Capital Flows to Emerging Markets

This article contributes to the establishment of a framework for the analysis of international capital flows, with a specific focus on emerging markets. It is based on a “monetary” analysis of the economy, as well as on the works of Hyman Minsky and Jan Toporowski in particular. The key aspects of such an approach are the following. First, in a monetary economy, capital flows need to be understood as “flows of funds” that pertain to the realm of financial choices, as opposed to the traditional understanding of capital flows as based on “real” variables, such as saving and investment. A consequence of this is the need to focus on gross flows rather than capital flows. Second, liquidity preference considerations also apply at the international level, particularly in relation to the liquidity of emerging-market currencies that, in turn, depends on context-specific “Keynesian fundamentals.” Third, the rise of institutional investors is the key historical development in the financial system, shaping the current reality of cross-border capital flows, including to emerging markets. I argue that institutional investors’ liabilities, in light of the theories of Minsky and Toporowski, are one of the most important variables in determining these investors’ portfolio choices. I synthesize these elements by defining capital flows to emerging markets as the demand for emerging-market assets by institutional investors. I propose a framework to categorize the various channels that guide this demand.     

Computing Cournot equilibrium through maximization over prices

This paper presents a characterization of internal Cournot equilibrium based on first-order conditions corresponding to profit maximization over prices. This characterization may yield significant computational advantage as demand functions need not be inverted and simple first-order conditions are obtained.     

A reformulation of the theory of demand by compensated demand functions

We present a formal approach to consumer demand by compensated demand functions. In accordance with the integrability theory or with the theory of revealed preference, we do not require the existence of a utility function, but we do assume certain hypotheses concerning functions describing rational behavior. In view of their properties, these functions can be interpreted as compensated demand functions. According to traditional neoclassical consumer theory, Shephard's lemma and the symmetry and negative semidefiniteness of the Slutsky-Hicks matrix can be shown. We shall also see that a convex, continuous, and monotonic preference ordering, which is representable by income compensation functions, can be introduced. It can also be shown that the existence of a compensated equilibrium can be derived within this approach by compensated demand functions. In order to obtain the existence of a compensated equilibrium under less stringent conditions we finally generalize the axioms assuming that a compensated demand correspondence is given.     

Linear economies are “gross substitute” systems

The uniqueness of the equilibrium price in linear exchange economies is proved by exploiting their “gross substitute” properties. A necessary and sufficient condition for the uniqueness is that no equilibrium price decomposes the economy. By a familiar mathematical tool — restriction and projection, the demand correspondence becomes a smooth function. We can then apply properties of the Jacobian matrix, which always has a dominant or quasi-dominant diagonal. The combination of convex and differential analysis can be used in piecewise linear economies. The uniqueness of the equilibrium price is a special case of the equilibrium index formula for regular piecewise linear economies.     

Dynamics and stability in IS-LM models: A re-examination

This paper shows that when inventory adjustments are introduced in production decisions, there is no longer such thing as a “stable” or “unstable” system of ISLM curves, even when the inventory policy is completely specified. For one such system and one inventory policy, the trajectories of output and interest rate can either be stable or unstable. The fact that the IS-LM diagram can no longer be regarded as a phase diagram leads to problems in the definition of the aggregate demand curve.     

Aggregation for material balances

In an input-output system, let final demands and gross outputs be iteratively balanced by successive approximations. The speed of convergence will depend, among other things, on the initial choice of gross outputs. Suppose that, using some aggregation weights, aggregate supply is made equal to aggregate demand in the initial plan. The current paper finds the set of aggregation weights that yields speediest convergence. An economic interpretation of the “optimal” aggregation weights is given, and some examples are calculated. J. Comp. Econ., March 1978, 2(1), pp. 1–11. Boston University, Boston, Mass., and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass.     

Why equity cannot be separated from efficiency: the welfare economics of progressive social pricing

Applied neoclassical microeconomists maintain that when profits are constrained, and average costs are higher than marginal costs, Ramsey “inverse elasticity” pricing optimizes static consumer welfare. However, when weighted, instead of unweighted, consumer surplus aggregation is used, the Ramsey pricing rule becomes a “progressive social pricing rule,” which suggests that under plausible conditions “direct-elasticity” rather than “inverse-elasticity” pricing is consumer welfare optimal.     

Learning foreign languages: Theoretical and empirical implications of the Selten and Pool model

In this paper we adopt the Selten–Pool [Selten, R., Pool, J., 1991. The distribution of foreign language skills as a game equilibrium. In: Selten, R. (Ed.), Game Equilibrium Models, vol. 4. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, pp. 64–84] framework of language acquisition based on “communicative benefits” derived from the ability to communicate with other speakers of an acquired language, and “learning costs” incurred by acquiring a foreign language. We show that, under some mild conditions, there exists a unique interior linguistic equilibrium. We then derive demand functions for foreign languages, that we estimate for English, French, German and Spanish in 13 European countries and demonstrate that the properties of these functions are consistent with our theoretical results.     

电力短缺、短期措施与长期战略

1 999年中国电力过剩 1 0 % ,而 2 0 0 4年估计将短缺 7%。电力规划应该根据GDP与电力需求间的长期关系制定 ,以避免大量过剩或短缺 ,并尽可能减少冲击。本文建议建立有效的电力短缺早期预警系统 ,制定全国的系统规划。规划要着眼于电力需求与GDP增长间的长期关系 ,并考虑“电力先行”的增长战略     

On Persistent Demand Shortages: A Behavioural Approach

We incorporate two sets of behavioural assumptions, fairness concerns and insatiable desire for money, into a dynamic optimization model to illuminate how they can generate persistent aggregate demand shortages. We obtain the conditions for persistent unemployment and temporary unemployment. Policy implications differ significantly between the two cases. A monetary expansion raises private consumption under temporary unemployment but not under persistent unemployment. A fiscal expansion may or may not increase short‐run private consumption but crowds out long‐run consumption under temporary unemployment. Under persistent unemployment, however, a fiscal expansion always increases private consumption. The “paradoxes of toil and flexibility” also appear.     

中国的高货币化之谜

通过将政府对银行体系的补贴和担保因素引入Mckinnon的最优货币化模型,本文初步认定政府对银行体系的控制是导致中国高货币化结果的基本原因。而基于BaileyCagan函数的提示,本文进一步发现,在政府对银行体系实施有效控制的前提下,内部货币扩张具有与外部货币扩张不同的货币需求“预算约束”和福利后果。其要害是,它可以兼容在货币化进程原本存在显著利益冲突的政府和居民部门的效用,从而使得中国的高货币化与货币价格的稳定并行不悖。本文的结论是,由于中国的高货币化具有十分特殊的金融制度内涵,因此既不能简单夸大其负面效应,也不能过高期望数量调整政策的效果。合理的做法应当着眼于调整政府、银行体系与居民部门基于内部货币扩张而形成的利益关联机制,以改变货币需求的“预算约束”和潜存于经济中的货币化激励。