Folk Economics

Folk economics is the intuitive economics of untrained people. It is concerned with distribution, and does not allow for or understand incentives. Folk economic notions evolved in our ancestors m circumstances where there was little in the way of specialization, division of labor, capital investment, or economic growth. It can explain the beliefs of naïve individuals regarding matters such as international trade, labor economics, law and economics, and industrial organization. It is important that voters understand economic principles. Economists would do a better job of persuading others and of teaching if we paid explicit attention to folk economics. Because untrained individuals do not fully understand gains from trade, training in economics is likely to improve welfare by increasing the number of trading opportunities. There is evidence that this is m fact true.     

The great realignment: How factor-biased innovation reshaped comparative advantage in the U.S. and Japan, 1970–1992

Recent changes in comparative advantage in the largest OECD economies contradict static Heckscher–Ohlin–Vanek theory. Japan's rising share of machinery exports and the improved comparative advantage of the USA in heavy industry were accompanied by growing scarcities of factors used intensively in these sectors. We show that under factor-price equalization, directed technical change leads to increasing specialization in goods intensive in each country's abundant factor. Testing this hypothesis with 1970–1992 export data from 14 OECD countries, we find that international comparative advantage was reshaped by biased innovation in the largest economies that increased the effective stocks of their abundant factors.     

Specialization dynamics and natural resources abundance

This paper uses a large sample of countries for the last four decades to document how specialization dynamics differ depending on the abundance of natural resources. We show interesting stylized facts on two main issues. First, we do not find evidence that comparative advantage in resource-intensive products is necessarily more persistent than comparative advantage in manufactured goods. Second, we analyze the interaction between specialization in manufacturing and natural resources abundance. Though it is less likely that resource-rich countries have comparative advantage in manufactured goods, the abundance of natural resources does not inhibit significant changes in specialization for these countries.     

The legal environment,specialized investments,incomplete contracts,and labor productivity

This paper provides a framework for analyzing the interactions among legal environments, incomplete contracts and specialized investments. It is well known that providers of specialized investments may be taken advantage when the contract is incomplete, thus an improvement in legal environments may be able to better protect those specialized asset investors and provide them with stronger incentive for specialized investments hence promote the overall level of specialization of the economy and enhance labor productivity. (1) We use the data set from IEDB(Industrial Enterprises Data Bank) of China to capture this effect. It is found that legal environment improvement does enhance the labor productivity through encouragement of specialization. This effect is robust under different settings in assumptions of endogeneity, heterogeneity and measurements of productivity index. (2) Heterogeneity analysis shows that a bigger market scale does encourage deeper specialization, more specialized investments, and thus improving the labor productivity. (3) The above conclusion holds up not only at the micro (firm) level but also at the macro level of the economy. The labor productivity increase happens with the growth of an industry along with deeper specialization and better legal environments.     

Lead markets, innovation differentials and growth

This article suggests that the specialization of countries in international trade is determined by the lead-lag market pattern of national markets. Many internationally successful innovations have been adopted first in one country while other countries initially either preferred other designs or an established product. A model for the international diffusion of innovations is presented in which nationally preferred innovation designs compete to become a globally dominant design. In this model, there are country-specific market attributes that increase the likelihood that the choice a country makes among alternative technologies is followed around the world. It is argued that technological knowledge gaps are not the origin of an international competitive advantage. Instead, a country gains a competitive advantage because a specific innovation design was adopted earlier than in any other country. This gives local firms a head start in producing, gathering marketing intelligence and securing the property rights of a globally successful innovation. In countries with lag market characteristics, domestic innovations are less likely to get adopted worldwide. Lag markets often switch from a domestic innovation design to a foreign innovation design, which increases imports. The lead-lag market explanation of trade specialization has implications for national policies. In this model domestic innovations do not always foster exports; idiosyncratic innovations induced by lag market contexts can hamper the export chances of local firms and in the end lead to an increase in imports. It is suggested that in order to increase exports, national policies have to distinguish between a domestic lead and lag market context in each industry. While in a lead market context, traditional policy instruments that enhance the rate of innovations are effective, in a lag market situation national follower strategies are more appropriate.     

“Low-Balling” and Efficiency in a Two-Period Specialization Model of Auditing Competition*

This paper develops a simple, two-period specialization model to analyze the effect of start-up costs on auditing competition. Audit firms in the model make strategic specialization and pricing decisions. Through specialization, an audit firm achieves a comparative cost advantage over its competitors for all clients whose characteristics are closer to its area of specialization. This comparative cost advantage is further fortified by the presence of start-up costs. As a result, each audit firm obtains some market power and is able to price-discriminate across clients by offering “specialization-and-relationship-specific” audit fee schedules. This paper demonstrates that the practice of “low-balling” is a natural consequence of competition among audit firms. However, low-balling occurs only in a certain market segment where audit firms compete fiercely. This paper also shows that a policy of banning low-balling acts as a substitute for the commitment of the audit firms to partially collude their pricing policies and results in increased profits for audit firms and increased fees. However, it also results in audit firms choosing specializations in a more efficient way, thereby reducing total auditing costs.     

Coordination

Many economic games have multiple equilibria, some of which are better than others for everyone involved. Such coordination games are of special interest to economists because they raise the possibility that a group of individuals or even a whole economy might become mired in an unfavorable situation. This paper explains how to use playing cards in the classroom to implement an economic game with multiple, Pareto-ranked equilibria. Discussion can focus on policies and institutions that promote coordination on better outcomes. Use: This experiment can be used in introductory economics to teach concepts of team production and coordination and in intermediate microeconomics to teach game-theoretic concepts of Nash equilibrium and Pareto optimality. Time required: Five minutes for reading instructions, 20 minutes for decision making, and about 15 minutes for discussion. Materials: You will need one or more decks of playing cards, each deck accommodating 26 people. One copy of the instructions should be made for each person. Payment to a randomly selected individual is optional and will require about a dollar or two.     

基于广义价值论的内生增长理论初探

增长理论是经济学的重要部分,关系到每一个人的福利和一个国家的地位。文章运用广义价值论研究经济增长问题,以分工为切入点,把分工产生的新增利益和该利益的公平分配统一起来,论述了递增性假设之外另一条增长的可能路径。主要结论如下：（1）基于比较优势的分工交换可以持续地产生比较利益即超过自给自足收益的净收益,这一收益不依赖于技术的递增或递减变化,具有普遍持久稳定性;（2）由分工交换产生的净收益构成原始积累的重要来源,既促进了生产规模和分工范围的扩大,又支持了研发和技术进步;（3）劳动生产力任何提高的效应都通过分工交换产生的比较利益加以放大,在一个分工交换系统中,行为主体提高比较优势产品和比较劣势产品的生产力分别具有正的和负的外部性;（4）基于广义价值论的内生经济增长体现了效率与公平的统一,一个好的制度是能够保证在交易中各方的比较利益率相等,掠夺性制度不仅直接损害经济增长,也不具备长期可持续性。     

Does Crime Pay? A Classroom Demonstration of Monitoring and Enforcement

This article presents a classroom game in which students choose whether or not to comply with pollution regulations. By varying the level of monitoring and fines for noncompliance, the game shows students how the probability and severity of enforcement affects incentives for compliance. The game can be adapted for settings other than environmental regulation and can be used in a variety of classes including regulation, law and economics, environmental economics, public economics, or economics of crime classes. It can easily be conducted in a 50-minute class period.     

How Would David Ricardo Have Taught the Principle of Comparative Advantage?

If David Ricardo had lived beyond the age of 51, how might he have delivered a lecture on comparative advantage? I argue that Ricardo infers the direction of comparative advantage and the size of the gains from trade by interpreting the four numbers in his Principles of Political Economy and Taxation for cloth and wine traded between England and Portugal as amounts of labor embodied in the quantities actually traded. He illustrates diagrammatically the gains from trade as the overall labor that England would save if it were to liberalize wheat imports by repealing the Corn Laws. Postulating a concave production function for wheat, Ricardo also depicts the concomitant rise in the profit rate, describing it as an equally important contemporary gain from trade for England. His interpretation differs radically from the textbook versions of the “Ricardian trade model,” and suggests a more authentic way of presenting the principle of comparative advantage.     

由拉美现象看我国对外贸易中的比较优势

拉美国家的经济在达到一定阶段后开始衰退,其中一个主要原因是其比较优势的丧失,由此对我国对外贸易中发挥比较优势进行了思考,分析了我国比较优势的发展动态,发挥比较优势中存在的一些问题,最后探讨了应对措施。     

从产品分工走向功能分工：经济圈分工形式演变与长期增长

近年来长三角的产品分工的专业化程度开始下降,研发和专业服务逐渐向上海集中,中心城市上海和江浙之间存在从产品分工走向功能分工的迹象。事实上,近几十年以来日本和美国经济圈的中心城市与其他城市之间都出现了从产品分工向功能分工的演变：中心城市更多的发挥管理、研发和服务的功能,生产功能则主要由经济圈其他城市承担。这是一个比较普遍的现象。本文在南北贸易模型的框架下,从理论上分析了这种现象出现的机制及其影响。我们发现,无论是技术层面的如企业异地管理成本的减少,还是制度层面的如针对产业转移的行政壁垒的降低,都会使稳态中经济圈中心城市和其他城市之间的产品分工程度降低,功能分工程度上升,并且在稳态中,经济圈的技术进步率和经济增长率增加,居民效用的增长率提高。     

Nosy Preferences,Benevolence, and Efficiency

We explore the implications of “nosy” preferences—when individuals have rankings over the specific actions of others—using recent theoretical results in the behavioral economics literature. Our model jointly captures preference interdependence over utilities (benevolence) and actions (nosiness). We apply the model to two well‐known environments. The first is a classic social choice problem; the second is a model of relative consumption concerns. For the former we characterize the existence of the impossibility once the social choice problem has been modeled as a behavioral game. For the latter we characterize when the negative externality arising from relative consumption concerns can be overcome without a policy intervention.     

Exchange Rates and State - Led Capitalism: What Can the NIC's Learn from Japan?

Having failed the free-market, laissez-faire, capitalist-economic-development interpretation, Japan's economic success is currently accorded a "revisionist" approach: it is treated as a "special case" on the grounds that Japan operates along a different set of cultural, economic, and political imperatives. This paper offers an alternative systematic economic interpretation of the "Japanese Miracle" which has transference to other countries. It is based on the Ricardo Principle, and uses purchasing-power-parity data to analyze Japanese development policies that led to successfully "leapfrogging" the process of economic development. The state of underdevelopment, with initial conditions that led to specialization in labor-intensive, low-value-added exports, and resulted in low wages and low living standards was ended "prematurely" in the 1960s, lest the country be trapped in its static comparative advantage. The state of development was then launched, with specialization in capital- and technology-intensive exports that had dynamic comparative advantage down-the-road. The process is characterized as "State-led capitalism," with the government using its strong arm to the purpose of achieving pluralistic economic development.     

Evolutionary Game Theory and the Modeling of Economic Behavior

Since the 1950s economists have applied game-theoretical concepts to a wide variety of economic problems. The Nash equilibrium concept has proven to be a powerful instrument in analyzing the outcome of economic processes. Since the late 1980s economists have also shown a growing interest in the application of evolutionary game theory. This paper discusses the main concepts of evolutionary game theory and their applicability to economic issues. Whereas traditional game theory focusses on the static Nash equilibria as the possible outcomes of the game, evolutionary game theory teaches us to explicitly model the behavior of individuals outside equilibrium. This may provide us with a better understanding of the dynamic forces within a society of interacting individuals.     

广东省制造业地区专业化特征及影响因素分析

文章采用区位商和樊卓福（2007）构造的地区专业化系数为指标,对广东省地区专业化水平进行度量,并分析规模因素、地区特征和产业特征对广东省制造业地区专业化的影响。结果表明：比较优势理论对广东省地区专业化具有较强的解释能力,劳动力禀赋和熟练劳动力禀赋是影响广东省制造业地区专业化的重要因素,城市的规模、市场潜力对地区专业化的形成也有明显的影响,但规模经济的影响作用不甚明显。     

Network Externalities and Standardization: A Classroom Demonstration

This paper presents a classroom game that can be used to demonstrate network externalities, standardization, and switching costs. In the basic game, students independently choose a technology whose value depends on the total number of students choosing that technology. In the next round, sequential decision making is allowed that quickly leads to standardization. Introducing imperfect information and switching costs into subsequent rounds can lead to the real-world phenomenon of an inferior technology becoming the standard. This exercise can be used in principles of economics classes to teach these important concepts without requiring mathematical models. In more advanced classes, construction of the mathematical model behind the game may be assigned.     

中国在东亚国际垂直专业分工体系中的地位与政策选择

文章通过分析东亚国际垂直分工体系的形成与发展,评价了中国在东亚分工体系中的地位,认为促进区域经济一体化、加快比较优势的转化及提高吸收能力可以促使中国在东亚国际垂直化分工体系中获得更多的分工利益。     

中国乳制品国际竞争力研究

通过对乳品行业贸易专业化指数、显示比较优势指数和国际市场占有率指数的分析发现我国乳制品的国际竞争力低,与发达国家存在较大差距。提升乳制品国际竞争力迫在眉睫。     

The Campus Parking Game: A Demonstration of Price Discrimination and Efficiency

This article presents a classroom game that allows students to directly experience the welfare improvements that can result from price discrimination. The demonstration uses a very familiar decision-making scenario, campus parking, to introduce the concept of price discrimination as well as reinforce the concepts of opportunity cost, consumer surplus, and search costs. This game can be used in a variety of classes, including principles, intermediate theory, industrial organization, or environmental economics, and can be conducted in a 50-minute class period with follow-up discussion in the next class.